LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



DDDDlStDDllb 



i^ 



SLAVERY 



AND THE 



DOMESTIC SLAVE-TRADE 



UNITED STATES. 

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THE EXECUTIVE 
C03I3IITTEE OF THE 

AMERICAN UMOX 

FOR THE 
RELIEF AND IMPROVEMENT OF THE COLORED RACE. 



./ 



BY PROF. E. A. AUDREY'S. 



BOSTON : 
LIGHT & STEARXS, 1 CORXHILL. 

1536. 



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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1836, 
by Light & Stearns, in the Clerk's Office of the 
^District Court of Massachusetts. 



PRESS OF LIGHT AND STEARNS. 
Samuel Hariis, Printer. 



//- 



ADVERTISEMENT 



EXECUTIVE COxMMITTEE OF THE AMERICAN UNION. 



The American Union for the Relief and Im- 
provement of the Colored Race, was formed in 
Boston, in January, 1835. An exposition of 
the principles and plans of the Union was soon 
after published by the Executive Committee. 
One of the principal objects of the Society, as 
stated in that paper, is to collect and publish 
information of an autlientic character respect- 
ing Slavery. It is conceived that there is yet 
no inconsiderable dearth of well-prepared and 
trust- worthy facts respecting this great national 
evil. It is obvious that it cannot be peacefully 
removed, except as it is seen in its true light. 

It is in prosecution of this great branch of 
their labors, that the Committee present the 



following Report concerning Slavery and the 
domestic slave-trade as it exists in Maryland, 
Virginia, and the District of Columbia. Coming, 
as it does, from a gentleman who is well 
acquainted with the whole subject of Slavery, 
from an actual residence of a number of years 
in a slave-holding state, it will be read with 
much interest and profit. It gives, in the 
opinion of the Committee, an accurate account 
of Slavery, and of the public sentiment respect- 
ing it in the district of country visited. As 
such, it is respectfully commended to the atten- 
tion of all the friends of the African race. 



Boston, Jan. 1, 1836. 



ADVERTISEMENT BY THE AUTHOR. 



The time for the solution of the great problem 
respecting the ultimate destination of the colored 
people of this country, has probably not yet arrived ; 
and though thousands of patriotic individuals, dis- 
tinguished alike for wisdom and benevolence, are 
now engaged in devising plans in relation to this 
subject, it is probable that many years must elapse 
before our countrymen will all unite in any mea- 
sure for the final settlement of this most important 
question. In the mean time, it is obviously of great 
importance that no practicable means for their bene- 
fit and improvement should be neglected. Upon this 
subject, the author of these Letters, in common with 
other members of the " American Union," believes 
that there is no well founded objection to a general 
union of all who sincerely wish to promote the 
best interests of the African race. Correct informa- 
1* 



VI 

tion respecting their present condition, was consid- 
ered by the members of the American Union as an 
indispensable preliminary to any relief which could 
be afforded them ; and it was wdth special reference 
to obtaining such information, that the author of 
these Letters w^as led to visit the northern slave-hold- 
ing states. The result of these inquiries was given 
in the following series of Letters, which are now 
published by order of the Committee to whom they 
were directed, and in the form in which they were 
originally wTitten. If their publication shall tend in 
any degree to turn the minds of our countrymen from 
angry contention respecting Slavery, to a serious 
consideration of the duties which they owe to the 
African race collectively and individually, the wishes 
of the author w^ill be fully realized. 

Boston, Jan. 1, 1836. 



CONTENTS. 



LETTER I.— New Haven.— Purpose of the author in 
undertaking tlie journey — Public sentiment in Con- 
necticut respecting Slavery and the Colonization 
Society — Cause of the increased activity of the friends 
of colonization — Canterbury school, -and the college 
for free blacks — Connecticut not opposed to the im- 
provement of the colored race, ....'* 9 

LETTER IL — New York.— An unceremonious intro- 
duction to a fellow traveller — His sentiments in regard 
to compulsory emancipation — Mob-law in Georgia — 
Interview with the President of the Anti-Slavery 
Society — His distinguished character for benevo- 
lence, 15 

LETTER III.— New York.— Condition of the free 
blacks in the Northern States — Their prospects — 
Their gradual change of employments — Comparison 
of their condition, &c., with that of Irish laborers — 
Sabbath Schools — Tendency of the education of the 
free blacks to foster bad passions, 21 

LETTER IV. — Journey to Philadelphia.— Inter- 
view with an old friend — Sentiments of fellow trav- 
ellers from the south — Young Men's Colonization 



vm 



Society of Pennsylvania — Hostility between the white 
and colored laborers in Philadelphia — Inconvenience 
to which the Middle States are subject in consequence 
of fugitive slaves, 27 

LETTER V. — Journey to Baltimore.— Condition of 
southern slaves employed as house servants — Condi- 
tion of the free bla.cks in Maryland — Causes of their 
depressed condition — Their aversion to colonizing in 
Africa — Their attachment to the Methodist church — 
General sentiments of the people of this state in 
regard to immediate emancipation — Mortality among 
the free blacks — Then* condition not a valid argument 
for perpetuating slavery, 33 

LETTER VI. — Baltimore. — Gradual diminution of 
the number of slaves in Maryland — Rapid increase of 
the free blacks — Free blacks reside principally in the 
cities — Extracts from the records of the Board of 
Health — Comparative mortality of the different classes 
of inhabitants, .41 

LETTER VII. — Baltimore. — Interview with a clergy- 
man — His views of colonization, &c. — Religious in- 
struction of the people of color — Indirect domestic 
slave-trade — Anecdote of a slave-trader and a pur- 
chaser of slaves — Laws relating to the free blacks in 
Maryland and New York, 47 

LETTER VIII.— Baltimore.— Public sentiment in 
Maryland respecting slavery — A ne^ro confined for 
stealing his wife — Colored church and school under 
the care of Mr. Livingston — State of education among 
the free blacks in Baltimore, 53 



IX 



LETTER IX.— Baltimore.— Maryland Colonization 
Society — Prospects of their colony at Cape Palmas — 
Manumissions in Maryland — Visit to the peniten- 
tiary — Instruction given gratuitously to the convicts 
by the Methodists — Proportion of white and colored 
convicts — Crimes for which they were committed, 59 

LETTER X.— Baltimore. — Causes of crime among 
the people of color — Remedy for it — Blacks said to bs 
reluctant to aid each other — Difficulties of a conscien- 
tious slave-holder illustrated by an example, .... 65 

LETTER XL— Baltimore.— Conversation Avith the 
clergyman mentioned in the l;ist letter — Information 
communicated by him respecting the religious instruc- 
tion of the people of color — Possibility of the white 
and colored races living together as freemen — British 
emancipation considered as an example for Americans 
— Irish laborers taking the place of colored ones — 
Probability that if the blacks are freed, the Irish and 
other white laborers will supplant them, 71 

LETTER XII. — Baltimore.— Interview with a slave- 
dealer — With a member of the Society of Friends — 
Difficulties in the way of adopting a system of eman- 
cii^ation in Maryland — Slave-trade in Baltimore — Mr. 
W. a wealthy dealer in slaves — Character of his 
brother who is engaged in the same trade, 77 

LETTER XIII. — Baltimore. — Readiness of the peo- 
ple of Maryland to manumit their slaves — Discourage- 
ments to this spirit — Mr. P.'s advertisements for slaves 
— Visit to a Sabbath School in Sharp Street — To the 
African Church in the same street, 83 



LETTER XIV. Baltimore. Responses of the 

Methodist Church — Adaptation of the Methodist dis- 
cipline to the character and condition of the negroes 
— Visit to a Sabbath School in the old town — Journey 
to Washington — Completion of the railroad — Autlior 
meets with an old friend — His interest in the people 
of color, 91 

LETTER XV.— WASHiyGTO-v.— Difficulty of ascer- 
taining the real feelings of the slaves illustrated — 
Causes of this difficulty — Frequent apprehensions of 
insuiTections — Trying situation of the slaves in such 
cases — Patrols — Their abuse of power, 97 

LETTER XVL— Washington.— Anecdotes exhibiting 
the sufferings occasioned by the domestic slave-trade 
— Liberty ^ alued by the negro — Sam's opinion of the 
value of liberty — Under what circumstances libei-ty is 
not desired, 103 

LETTER XVII. — Washington. — Disti*ess occasioned 
in the District of Columbia by the slave-ti'ade — Anec- 
dotes illustrative — Probability that slavery must soon 
terminate — Excitement against abolitionists, . . . Ill 

LETTER XVIII.— Washington.— Interview with a 
clerg}'man — Rapid emigration from Virginia — Wil- 
lingness of the slaves to remove — Deplorable situation 
of the free blacks in Washington — Colored members 
of the 3Iethodist cliurches — Kidnapping — Testimony 
of Judge Cranch to the good character of the blacks 
belonging to the Methodist churches — Slave-trade of 
the District — Right of Congi-ess to interfere with the 
slavers' of the District, 117 



XI 



LETTER. XIX.— Washi-ngtox.— Visit to the peniten- 
tiary of the District — Proportion of colored convicts — 
Story of old Anna and her children, 127 

LETTER XX.— Alexandria.— Visit to Franklin and 
Arnifield's slave-prison — Description of the interior — 
Appearance of the slaves — Manner of conducting the 
trade, 135 

LETTER XXI. — Steamboat on the Potomac. — A 
slave-trader with liis slaves — Escape of a number of 
slaves to Bermuda — X.'s account of the manner of 
conductuig the slave-trade and of its profits — Treat- 
ment of slaves on their way to market — Infamy of 
the slave-dealer, 145 

LETTER XXII. — Frederick-burg, — Southern ex- 
citement on the suliject of slavery — Causes of this 
excitement — Injury to tlie slaves from noithern inter- 
ference — Unfair treatment of abolitionists — Danger 
arising from misrepresenting their views, 155 

LETTER XXIII.— Fredericksburg.— The deatli of a 
slave — Character of the free I)lacks in this city — A 
collection for the Coloniztition SocietA' — Objections 
made to northern discussions — A slave-prison in this 
city — Eifect of slaver}' on the character of female 
slaves, 161 

LETTER XXIV. — Fredericksburg. — Increasing wil- 
hngness of slaves to remove to the south — Separation 
of husbands and wives by the slave-trade — Anecdotes 
illustrating the miseries occasioned by this trade — 
Change in the treatment of slaves in Virginia — Pro- 
posed change in the compensation made to slaves, 167 



Xll 



LETTER XXV.— RrcHMOND.— A planter from Louisi- 
ana — His purchase of a large lot of slaves — His state- 
ments respecting slaveiy in the south-west — Interview 
with Mr. P. — Objections made by him to northern 
interference, 171 

LETTER XXVI. — Steamboat on the Chesapeake. 
— Sentiments of a Virginian respecting the dissolution 
of the Union — Efforts in Virginia for the removal of 
slavery not suspended by the movements of the aboli- 
tionists — Baltimore — Frequent attempts at kidnapping 
— Anecdotes respecting it, 175 

LETTER XXVII.— Baltimore.— Success of Metho- 
dist and Baptist preachers among the colored popula- 
tion — Peculiar qualifications necessary in such preach- 
ers — A religious overseer — Abstract of the number of 
colored communicants in the Methodist churches in 
the United States — Increasing attention to the religious 
instruction of the people of color, 187 

LETTER XXVIII.— Baltimore.— Possibility of put- 
ting an end to tie domestic* slave-trade — Duty of pre- 
serving unbroken the family relations — Under what 
circumstances the slave-trade is not an evil — Philadel- 
phia — Comparative respectability of a slave-trader and 
a wealthy slave-owner — Slaves employed in the gold 
n]^ines — Increased severity in the treatment of slaves 
ascribed to the abolitionists — Reasons for doubts upon 
this subject — Prevailing tendency to attempt coercion — 
Certainty that such attempts cannot finally succeed — 
Principles confirmed by the author's inquiries, . . 193 



LETTERS ON SLAVERY. 



LETTER I. 



New Haven, July 10, 1835. 

To the Executive Committee of tlie American Union for the Relief and 
Improvement of the Colored Kace : 

As the journey which I have now cominenced 
was undertaken at your request, and for the pro- 
motion of the benevolent purposes of the American 
Union, I know not how I can better discharf^e 
the duties which your kindness has imposed upon 
me, than by recording, in a series of letters directed 
to you, the impressions which 1 may receive, 
and the information which I may obtain, from day 
to day, respecting the situation and prospects of 
the colored people of this country. Their future 
condition is dependent, in so great a degree, upon 
the progress of public sentiment, that it must of 
course be a prominent object to ascertain the pres- 
2 



10 

ent state of public feeling upon this subject, and to 
inquire how far recent discussions, respecting this 
people, may have aftected their present prospects. 
In passing through Connecticut, I have omitted 
no opportunity, which an extensive and intimate 
acquaintance with its citizens has afforded me, of 
ascertaining their sentiments in relation to this sub- 
ject. Like the people of the other New England 
States, they have become deeply interested in the 
present discussions respecting southern slavery, but, 
so far as I can perceive, no considerable impression 
has been made upon them in favor of the doctrine 
of immediate emancipation. The opposition to 
this doctrine, on the other hand, appears to be 
more strenuous and decided here than in Massa- 
chusetts. This fact may be attributed to the more 
intimate connection between the people of Connec- 
ticut, and those of the Middle and Southern States. 
The Colonization Society has always numbered 
among its friends the principal men of this state. 
From its commencement, they have favored its 
design of planting christian colonies upon the 
shores of Africa, for the purpose of conveying to 
them the blessings of civilization and religion, and 
of affording an asylum for such of the free people 
of color, as should be induced, by a love of indepen- 
dence, to seek for a permanent residence in the 
land of their fathers. But though friendly to these 



11 



designs of the society, they have, in general, mani- 
fested no remarkable zeal in its favor. It has 
ranked, in their view, with the other benevolent 
societies of the day, which they have been called 
upon to sustain by their contributions ; and they 
have assisted in supporting it, rather from a sense of 
duty, than from a deep feeling of personal interest 
in its objects. From the first, there were some 
who believed that its purposes were chimerical, and 
especially that its influence could never m.aterially 
affect the condition of the great body of the colored 
people in this country. When, at length, an 
organized opposition arose, and the objects and 
tendencies of the society were openly called in 
question, many who had afforded to it their aid, 
rather in compliance with fashion and general custom 
than from a settled conviction of duty, withdrew 
from its support. Some of these are now found in 
the ranks of its opponents, but a greater part, 
though by no means indifferent to the welfare of 
the slaves, or rather because they are not indiffer- 
ent to it, have taken no part in the contest between 
the two societies. Its remaining friends are now 
more ardent than at any former period, but, in gen- 
eral, they do not claim that colonization affords the 
only means of benefiting the colored race. With 
scarcely an exception, I have found them disposed 
to unite in any feasible plan for improving their 



12 

moral and intellectual condition, without refer- 
ence to their final destination, whether as colo- 
nists abroad, or as residents in this, their native 
country. 

That there is at present a reaction in Connecti- 
cut in favor of the Colonization Society, is evident, 
and the causes are perhaps equally so. A promi- 
nent cause undoubtedly is, the alarm which is 
generally felt in regard to the measures of the 
Anti-Slavery Society. This has led those who 
wished to stay the progress of principles, which 
they deem to be of dangerous tendency to the 
future peace and prosperity of our country, to unite 
in favor of that society, against which the princi- 
pal efforts of the abolitionists have been directed. 
Had the latter never assailed this society, it is 
doubtful, whether the apathy, which had for some 
time prevailed respecting colonization, would, for 
many years, have been shaken ofi'; but now, those 
who fear the consequences of anti-slavery doc- 
trines, generally yield a ready support to those 
of colonization. 

The excitement, which so long prevailed in this 
state, respecting the Canterbury school, has now 
subsided, but no change of sentiment respecting it 
seems to have occurred. The time has not yet 
come for writing the history of that school, or of 
the attempt to found at New Haven a college for 



13 

colored youth ; nor, when it shall arrive, is it 
probable that very enduring laurels will be gained 
by those who acted a prominent part, either in 
efforts for establishing those institutions, or for pre- 
ventino- their establishment. For the honor of the 

o 

State, I am happy to believe, that it cannot be 
fairly inferred from these transactions, nor even 
from the acts of its legislature upon this subject, 
that there has ever been a general disposition, 
on the part of its citizens, to prevent the intellec- 
tual and moral improvement of that unfortunate 
race. This I think will be evident, whenever 
these transactions shall be exhibited in their true 
light ; but there is perhaps reason to fear, that the 
measures which the state was induced to adopt, for 
the purpose of opposing what she viewed as a 
dangerous and pernicious fanaticism, were not 
wholly free from danger to the cause of civil free- 
dom and of human rights. The acts of her legis- 
lature, of her courts, and of the citizens of Canter- 
bury, it is easy to hold up to ridicule or reproach ; 
but it is not easy to represent, in their true light, the 
measures to which those legislative acts, and the 
decisions of her courts were opposed. 



LETTER II, 



New York, July 11, 1835. 

Foreigners often complain of the unceremo- 
nious manner, in which certain classes of Ameri- 
cans take the liberty of introducing themselves to 
strangers, and of entering into conversation with 
them. From the frequency of the complaint, it is 
probably not wholly without foundation ; and it is 
easy to conceive, that our peculiar institutions, 
operating upon men uninstructed in the etiquette of 
more polished society, may lead them occasionally 
to adopt a style of address offensive to persons of 
fastidious taste, who are accustomed to more cere- 
mony in their social intercourse. 

I was forcibly reminded of this alleged charac- 
teristic of my countrymen, as 1 was passing yester- 
day through Long Island Sound, on my way from 
New Haven to this city. After enjoying, for some 
time, the beauty of that fine expanse of water, its 
deep bays encircled with woods, and the pleasant 
farm houses, and neat country seats, which adorn 
its shores, and after exhausting the usual topics of 
conversation, with the few persons on board the 



16 

boat, with whom I happened to be acquainted, I 
had retired to a shady corner, and was deeply en- 
gaged in reading. A short time only had passed 
in this employment, when I was interrupted by a 
middle aged stranger, who came behind me, and 
without even the formality of, " with your leave, 
sir," began to examine the book which I was read- 
ing, and soon inquired what it was. A single 
glance was enough to satisfy any American to 
what class of society the stranger belonged, and 
that no offence was intended. His object w^as 
simply to draw me into conversation, and this w^as 
the somewhat awkward expedient which he had 
chosen for accomplishing it. I replied accordingly, 
that it was a new work on African slavery. It 
soon appeared that this was a subject in which my 
new acquaintance took a deep interest, and he 
proceeded indirectly to inquire wdiere I lived. 
" May be," said he, " you are a southerner." — I 
rephed, that I lived in Boston. He then told me, 

that he belonged to S , in Connecticut, that 

he was a Baptist, and knew some of the Baptist 
clergymen in Boston very well — having heard them 

preach in S . He then remarked, that he 

thought " it was quite time that something was 
done about the slaves at the south, — that accord- 
ing to all accounts, they were very badly used, and 
if their masters would not set them at liberty, they 



n 



ought to be made to do it." I endeavored, but 
probably to no purpose, to convince bim, that the 
people of the north had no right forcibly to inter- 
fere with the slavery of the south, however much 
we might deplore its existence. It appeared that 
he had heard the discussions of a lecturer of the 
Anti-Slavery Society, and this was the inference 
w4iich he, in common with many others of the 
same class of our northern citizens, had derived 
from them ; — that it was the duty of the friends 
of humanity to compel the slave-holders imme- 
diately to liberate their slaves. 

This was probably a false inference from the posi- 
tions of the lecturer, as the sentiment is distinctly and 
earnestly disavowed by the anti-slavery leaders. 
Still it is an inference very often made, and evinces 
the necessity of enlightening the understanding more 
upon this subject, and of addressing the passions less. 

Several other passengers at length took a part 
in the conversation, among w'hom was one, who 
had formerly resided for many years in Georgia, 
and to whom that state was said to be under no 
small obligation for the able services rendered by 
him, as civil engineer, in promoting her schemes 
of internal improvement, but who was, at length, 
driven from the state by a mob, formed within 
sight of her capitol, and deprived of nearly all his 
property, the laborious earnings of many years of 



18 



enterprising industry. The excitement, of which , 
he was the innocent victim, had arisen from a sedi- 
tious publication, sent from the north by some 
unknown individual, for the purpose, as it was said, 
of exciting the slaves to insurrection. An enemy 
had intimated that this gentleman was concerned 
in disseminating the obnoxious publication ; and 
the mob, without inquiring into his guilt, would 
have proceeded at once to imbrue their hands in 
his blood, had he not escaped from them. 

This morning I called upon a distinguished 
member of the Anti-slavery Society, for the pur- 
pose of engaging his co-operation in measures, for 
ascertaining the actual condition of the free colored 
people of the north, especially of those inhabiting 
the principal cities. This measure was intended 
as a foundation for efforts to relieve their wants, 
w^hether physical or moral ; and by ascertaining 
their actual condition, to prepare the way for its 
improvement. 

The proposal did not meet w'ith his entire ap- 
probation. He thought we were already suffi- 
ciently acquainted with their situation ; that It was 
not mere Information on this subject which was 
principally needed, but the removal of a cruel 
prejudice against them. To disclose their poverty, 
and the meanness of their employments, he thought, 
would but bring them into greater contempt ; and 



19 

that such a census would be attended with great 
difficuhy, on account of their unsettled and migra- 
tory habits. If, however, there should appear to 
be any adequate advantage arising from such a 
measure, he had no doubt that it would be cheer- 
fully undertaken in New York, and the requisite 
funds obtained. 

His whole conversation left upon my mind an 
impression of the deepest interest, on his part, in 
this unfortunate class of our fellow citizens, and a 
readiness to aid in any proper measure, which, in 
his view, was likely to relieve them. Indeed a 
long' acquaintance with his principles and views, 
not only authorizes, but requires me to declare? 
that in genuine benevolence of heart, and in all the 
varied acts of beneficence by which kindness can 
manifest itself to the poor, the ignorant, and the 
unfortunate, there is no man, in the whole length 
and breadth of the land, that can claim pre-emi- 
nence over the individual of whom I have now the 
honor and the pleasure to speak, and who needs, 
to an intelligent and pious community, no other 
designation than this, that among American chris- 
tians he has long been distinguished as first in 
every good work. To those who have been so 
forward in reproaching him for the part he has 
taken in relation to African slavery, I may be 
allowed to say, while holding opinions upon this 



20 



important subject essentially different from his, that 
for the relief of human suffering, and the enlighten- 
ing of human ignorance, the entire contributions 
made by some wealthy states, where his name is 
the theme of daily reproach, would scarcely equal 
the numerous, unostentatious, but noble benefac- 
tions of Arthur Tappan. 



LETTER III. 



New York, July 13, 1835. 



There is little in the present condition of the 
colored people of the northern states of a nature to 
encourage the friends of abolition, either immediate 
or gradual. Here slavery has ceased to exist, but 
the expected influence of liberty, in elevating the 
character, and in) proving the condition of the col- 
ored race, has been hitherto very imperfectly real- 
ized. Their social and political relations continue 
unaltered, nor is there the slightest evidence that, 
in these respects, the progress of public sentiment 
is becoming more favorable to their elevation. On 
t[)e contrary, the few attempts which have been 
made by theoretic philanthropists, to press their 
claims to social equality, have uniformly resulted 
in an indignant rejection of those claims. 

An opinion that they are inferior to the whites 
in mental endowments is, no doubt, extensively 
prevalent ; but this opinion is not the foundation of 
the aversion to which I have alluded, which is 
directed exclusively to their persons, and is not 
materially affected by their talents, or even by their 



22 

virtues. In regard to social equality, therefore, 
their case appears at present to be altogether hope- 
less ; but there is, perhaps, no insuperable diffi- 
culty in their elevation to higher, more lucrative, 
and more honorable employments ; and it still re- 
mains to be determined, whether, when the ave- 
nues to wealth shall be in a greater degree opened 
to them, a change will not gradually follow in their 
political and even in their social relations. In re- 
gard to their employments, a change has already 
occurred in New York, and in the more eastern 
cities of the Union. It is said to be but a few 
years since the hod-carriers and other laborers of 
the same class in New York, were principally 
negroes ; now they are almost exclusively Irish 
Catholics. The latter, it is generally believed, are 
capable of performing far more labor than the 
former; and they are also much more industrious 
in their habits. Mr. M. of this city, who has 
studied attentively the character of these two 
classes of laborers, says that an Irish Catholic sel- 
dom attempts to rise to a higher condition than 
that in which he is placed, while the negro often 
makes the attempt with success. In his opinion, 
the negroes in New York evince a greater capacity 
for improvement than the Irish Catholics, and 
have so managed as to keep possession of those 
employments which require less labor and fatigue, 



23 

while they have left the more laborious ones for 
their rivals in business. Mr. J., who has devoted 
more attention to the improvement of the colored 
people than almost any man in this country, has 
remarked, that in visiting the houses of the ne- 
groes and of the Irish laborers, he has usually 
found the domestic comforts of the latter, and their 
style of living, far inferior to what he had witnessed 
in the abodes of the former. 

The negroes in New York have also the charac- 
ter of being far more trusty, and more kind and 
affectionate in their dispositions than the Irish. 
Parents do not, in general, fear that black nurses 
will be wanting in kindness to the children en- 
trusted to their care, but equal confidence would 
seldom be placed in Irish nurses, whose kindness 
and fidelity had not been proved. This compari- 
son is made, not for the purpose of depressing the 
character of Irish laborers, but of elevating that of 
the negroes, by showing the confidence placed in 
them as an entire class, and independently of per- 
sonal acquaintance with them. -. 

Yesterday being Sunday, I went out in search 
of an African Sabbath school, but haviuir nerdected 
to make precise inquiries in regard to their loca- 
tion, I did not succeed in findini^ one. At lencrth 
I met a black boy in a clean Sunday suit, with a 
book in his pocket, who told me that he was going 



24 

to a school in the basement of a building, which he 
pointed out, at no great distance. Concluding, 
without further inquiry, that this must be one of 
the schools of which I was in search, I entered, and 
found, that, with the exception of my guide, there 
were none but white children present. The 
school belonged to the Dutch Reformed church, 
and was but thinly attended. One class, however, 
consisted of young men, natives of Poland and 
Roman Catholics, who were attending the school 
solely for the purpose of learning to read and pro- 
nounce the English language. The superintendent 
informed me that they received and taught all the 
colored children whom they could induce to attend, 
but that these were few in number, and irregular 
in their attendance. The only one now present 
constituted a class by himself, in the absence of 
his colored companions. The girls of this school 
were taught in a different apartment, and were far 
more numerous than the boys ; but I observed no 
colored children among them. From this school I 
went to that connected with Dr. Spring's church. 
This is a large, and apparently a well regulated 
school, but it contained no colored children. 

From the inquiries which I made of the friends 
of the negroes in New York, it seems doubtful 
whether the black children here are educated in a 
better manner now, than they were many years 



25 

ago. Mr. S., who is perhaps somewhat addicted 
to the inquiry, " why the former days were better 
than these," remarks, that since the excitement 
respecting the abolition of southern slavery, the 
colored people of this city have been taught to 
distrust the good intentions of those in whom they 
formerly reposed confidence. He thinks it is great- 
ly to be fearc ', that since that period, their educa- 
tion has consisted, in too great a degree, in the 
cultivation of malignant feelings towards the whites, 
and of vain wishes to possess a rank in society, 
which, in his view, there is little prospect of their 
obtaining at any time, while mingled with the 
whites ; and least of all while they shall exhibit no 
better claims to superior distinction, than the pos- 
session of their present sentiments on the subject 
of human rights. It is possible, he observes, that 
a greater proportion of colored children may now 
be taught to read and write than in former years • 
but it is doubtful whether their education, con- 
sisting of all those influences which tend to 
form the intellectual, moral, and religious charac- 
ter, is bv:tter now ihan it was many years since. 
On the con:r-:ry, he thinks there is reason to fear, 
that they are laying a foundation for lives less 
happy, and less useful, than those of their fathers. 
3 



LETTER IV. 



Philadelphia, July 14, 1835. 

On board the steamboat in which I left New 
York, I found Mr. L)., a native of New England, 
who had long resided in the south, but who, within 
a few years past, lias removed to New York. Our 
conversation, as we crossed the bay and ascended 
the Raritan, naturally turned to the days when we 
had both resided in the Southern States, and had 
there formed attachments, which led us still to take 
a deep interest in everything affecting their inter- 
ests. I found my old friend was no abolitionist, in the 
present restricted sense of the term ; still he cher- 
ished all his former kindness of feeling towards the 
slaves, and the same aident wishes that some ration- 
al plan could be devised to restore liberty to them, 
and security and prosperity to those who have inher- 
ited so sad a birthright as the possession of slaves. 
He is not altogether a cordial friend of the Coloni- 
zation Society, for he fears tliat its tendency is, to 
prevent the adoption of really efficient measures 
for the removal of slavery. Still he does not wish 



28 

the labors of the society to cease, but rather to be 
employed, with augmented resources, in improving 
the condition of Africa, and of those colored per- 
sons who may desire to go to the land of their 
fathers. 

From South Amboy to Bordentown, several of 
my fellow travellers upon the railroad were from 
the south. They spoke of slaves, ai^d of the Anti- 
Slavery Society, in such a manner as fully to evince 
their attachment to perpetual slavery. They w^on- 
dered that the north would suffer anti-slavery doc- 
trines to be publicly taught, and discussions respect- 
ing the propriety of slavery to be continued ; and 
above all, that foreigners were permitted to take a 
part in these discussions. They declared that it 
was time to put an end to such seditious proceed- 
ino-s, and that a meetino^ of southerners was soon to 
be held in New York to take the subject into con- 
sideration. When I spoke to them of the danger 
which attended an interference with the subject, 
lest, while we attempt to prevent discussions and 
publications tending to produce insurrection, we 
should subvert the great principles of the liberty of 
speech and of the press, it was obvious that their 
ideas respecting these privileges were essen- 
tially different from those entertained in New Eng- 
land. The measures to which they alluded for 
ihe suppression of anti-slavery principles had, in 



29 

general, no reference to legal proceedings, but to 
personal intimidation and violence. 

The friends upon whom I have called, as well 
in this city as in New York, have evinced great 
eagerness to know what measures tlie American 
Union are proposing to adopt respecting slavery. 
Such is the excitement which agitates almost every 
mind, that the intellectual and moral improvement 
of the African race, and the difiiision of correct 
principles respecting the religious, political, and 
social evils of slavery, are processes far too tardy 
to satisfy the general demand for immediate action. 

The Young Men's Colonization Society of Penn- 
sylvania are zealously engaged in giving stability to 
their promising colony at Bassa Cove. Among 
the friends of this society, Mr. Elliot Cresson de- 
serves to be especially mentioned for his untiring 
zeal in the cause of African Colonization. To 
him, and to other friends of the colored race in 
Philadelphia, I am under many obligations for their 
personal kindness and polite attentions, and for the 
facilities which I have enjoyed through their means, 
for obtaining the most valuable information in re- 
gard to the condition of the free colored people of 
the Middle States. The friends of colonization in 
this city favor the objects of the American Union ; 
but some of them are desirous that our efforts to 
instruct and elevate the colored race should be 



30 



confined, in a great degree, to the colonies in Africa. 
The separation of the white and black races they 
consider as an essential part of every plan for per- 
manent benefit to the latter, and accordingly 
they suppose it best, in our efforts to improve their 
condition, that we should commence with this prin- 
ciple. This advice is unquestionably the result of a 
sincere conviction, on their part, that such a course 
is most expedient : but I need not say how much 
it is at variance with the views of those who formed 
the Union, and by whom it is supported. 

In my walks in this city, I have observed, 
among the laborers, a larger proportion of ne- 
groes than in New York, and a proportionably 
smaller number of Irishmen. There appears to 
exist, in the lower class of white laborers in this 
city, a very bitter hostility to the colored people, 
the cause of which 1 do not fully understand. Its 
natural effect in producing a return of hatred, is 
very apparent ; and unless something is done to 
raise the tone of moral feeling in both classes, it is 
evident that great evils may result from their mu- 
tual animosities. 

This hostility to the negroes, on the part of the 
lower class of whites, is not, however, peculiar to 
Philadelphia. It is occasionally manifested, in an 
alarming degree, by the populace in several of the 
eastern cities, and even in the Southern States. 



31 

The negroes also, though they feel great respect 
for the wealthier and more intelligent whites, do 
not hesitate to express their contempt for such of 
them as are poor and ignorant ; and thus the 
elements of hostility are perpetually in operation, 
and are ready, whenever an occasion offers, to 
burst forth into a flame. 

Pennsylvania, as a frontier territory between the 
slave-holding and non-slave-holding states, is be- 
coming the receptacle of manumitted and fugitive 
slaves, and is exposed to all the inconveniences in- 
cident to such a population — and these are neither 
few nor small. Should the present system of parr 
tial manumission and expulsion continue to pre- 
vail at the south, it is impossible to foresee the full 
amount of evils which must result from their re- 
moval to the Middle States. In Maryland, and the 
states farther south, they are forbidden to reside 
after manumission ; and hence a great part of those 
who are liberated, or who escape from servitude, 
flee to the Middle States, especially to Pennsylvania 
and New York. Here they meet the tide of Irish 
immigration, and a contest conmiences for obtain- 
ing the means of subsistence. Such, however, is 
the superior industry of the Irish laborer, that he is 
gradually supplanting his rival, wherever severe 
and patient toil is requisite ; and the free negro is 
often driven, by the joint operation of sloth and of 



32 

real inability to acquire employment, to resort to 
dishonest means of support. It is impossible that 
this state of things should long continue ; and if 
the free states had no other interest in the subject 
of slavery, and no right on other accounts to raise 
their voice upon the subject, the evil of which I 
now speak, would be sufficient to justify them in 
expressing their fervent wish for the final termina- 
tion of a system, which occasions a constant influx 
of a class of citizens who threaten destruction to 
all their valuable institutions. 



LETTER y. 

Baltimore, July 16, 1835. 

My journey from Philadelphia to this city was 
rendered pleasant, not only by the rich variety of 
beautiful scenery, through which we pass, and 
which one can never cease to adnnire, but also by 
the company with which I travelled. Among 
others into whose society I was accidentally thrown, 
were two families from the extreme south, who 
were returning slowly homeward from their sum- 
mer's tour to the Northern States, and stopping so 
long in the principal cities through which they 
passed, and at the various watering places which 
they visited, as to reach Louisiana after the first 
frosts of autumn should have rendered their return 
safe. The gentlemen might have been twenty- 
five or thirty years old ; the ladies were a few 
years younger. The latter had each the charge 
of an interesting child two or three years old, the 
special care of which was committed to two colored 
nurses, who were their only attendants. It was 
not easy to determine which of the group were hap- 



34 

piest, the sedate, intelligent, and dignified fathers, 
the accomplished mothers, the playful children, or 
their young, well fed, and well dressed nurses. 

The situation in which domestic slaves are often 
placed, in prosperous, moral and intelligent flimi- 
lies, is one of far more unmingled happiness than 
is usually imagined by those who have never wit- 
nessed it. The mistake into which many fall, upon 
this subject, arises principally from their failing 
to estimate properly the amount of happiness occa- 
sioned by the mutual affection between the white 
and the colored members of the same family. 
This attachment is of course a more available 
source of happiness in virtuous families, than in 
those of an opposite character; but, like parental 
and filial affection, it is rarely entirely wanting, 
even in the most hardened and profligate. ; This 
relation is in reality more like that of parent and 
child, than like any other with which it can be 
compared, and is -altogether stronger than that 
which binds together the northern employer and 
his hired domestic. The slave looks to his master 
and mistress for direction in everything, and insen- 
sibly acquires for them a respect mingled with 
affection, of whicli those never dream who think of 
slavery only as a system of whips and fetters — of 
unfeeling tyranny, on the one part, and of fear 
mingled with hatred, on the other. The latter is 



35 

the usual picture of slavery which is presented to 
the people of the north, and it is no wonder that 
southern masters, who know how wide from truth 
this representation is, are not particularly ready to 
listen to the counsel of those, whom they perceive 
to be so ill-informed upon tlie subject. Wanton 
cruelty may be too often practised by masters, as 
it is by many parents ; but this, which is but an 
occasional incident of slavery, should not be ex- 
hibited as the prominent evil. This may be 
removed by the influence of humane feelings, and 
especially by christian j)rinciple ; but countless evils 
will still remain, inherent and inseparable from the 
system. 

Mr. A., an intein<i;ent and influential member of 
the Methodist church, to whom I brought letters 
from a friend in Boston, states as his deliberate 
opinion, that the condition of the {vee blacks in 
Maryland is much worse than that of the slaves. 
As one proof of this, he alleges, that the propor- 
tion of deaths among them is much greater than 
in any other class of society. Tlieir opportwiiiies 
for intellectual improvement he supposes may be, 
in general, greater than those of the slaves ; but 
they either have few n)otives to improve them, or 
are little influenced by such motives. Hence they 
are addicted to sloth, with all its attendant evils. 
Their imperfect moral discipline, and indolent 



36 

habits, lead them also to the commission of petty 
thefts, in consequence of which great numbers of 
them are sent to the penitentiary. 

These facts cannot probably be questioned, but 
in explanation of them it ought not to be forgotten, 
that a very prominent cause of the degradation of 
the free blacks, is not their own freedom, but the 
slavery of others. The owners of slaves of course 
look with jealousy and suspicion upon the free, 
and may often pursue towards them such a course 
as is calculated to depress and discourage them. 
They are interested in making it appear that free- 
dom is no blessing, and they have, to some extent, 
the power to prevent its becoming so. If slavery 
were universally abolished, at that moment the 
free black would become valuable. He would 
take his place in the field with his comrades, as 
one of a company of hired laborers. He would be 
encouraged to industry, and laws would be enacted 
to promote his welfare and happiness. With such 
a change in his circumstances, who does not per- 
ceive that a corresponding change in his character 
is likely to occur? 

There is a general aversion, on the part of the 
colored people of this state, both bond and free, to 
the plan of colonization in Africa. This dislike 
Mr. A. attributes principally to the publications of 



37 



the Anti-Slavery Society, which are extensively 
circulated here among the free blacks. He even 
reirrets that the Metliodist church has given its 
sanction to the plan of the Colonization Society, 
since it prejudices the colored people against its 
members and teachers. The Methodist churchy 
in this state, includes a great number of colored 
members, among whom are many slaves. The 
doctrine, lately maintained in New England, that 
the gospel cannot reach the heart of a slave, finds 
little to countenance it in the actual condition of 
the southern churches. 

There are no free schools for colored children 
in this city, but several private schools are 
kept by free blacks. Opportunities are afford- 
ed them for attending Sabbath schools, but 
they are in general negligent of this privilege. 
The Methodist churches devoted to the people of 
color, are \vell filled. A part only of their preach- 
ers are white ; but some of the most popular 
preachers of that church have been, at various 
times, stationed here as preachers to the African 
churches. 

There is but one opinion here among all classes 
respecting immediate emancipation. All agree 
that it would be extremely dangerous, on account 
of the indolent and improvident character of the 



38 

negroes. It is thought that they need much pre- 
vious preparation for freedom, and that any measure 
for complete emancipation, in order to be safe to 
others, or useful to the slaves, should be gradual 
in its operation. To the inquiry, " how shall they 
be prepared," it is replied, " by training them to 
virtuous and industrious habits, and giving them 
useful and profitable employment." It is said also 
that there is much more kindness exercised to- 
wards the colored people here than in the Northern 
States. The negroes are represented as in general 
a peaceable and quiet people, and as not peculiarly 
prone to excitement, when not provoked by ill 
treatment, or influenced by alcohol. Like other 
persons in their situation, they are addicted to in- 
temperance ; and although attempts have been 
made to introduce temperance societies among them, 
very little success has attended the eflbrts. 

For the purpose of ascertaining the comparative 
mortality of the whites, the free people of color, 
and the slaves, I have obtained from the Board of 
Health, copies of their reports for several years 
past. From these it appears that since the sum- 
mer of 1 823, an accurate account has been kept 
of the number of deaths in each of these classes. 
Inquiries were made, not only at the office of the 
Board of Health, but from many well-informed 



39 



citizens, respecting the confidence to be placed 
in these reports, and no reason could be found for 
distrusting their accuracy. Some of the results of 
these reports will be given in a subsequent letter, 
from which it will appear that the annual mortality 
among the free blacks is considerably greater than 
in either of the other classes. 

It must not be thought, however, that the unfor- 
tunate condition of the free blacks affords a valid 
argument for perpetuating slavery. It proves, 
indeed, that something besides nominal freedom is 
requisite to insure their happiness; but this is 
equally true of all men. Idle, dissolute, and 
intemperate white men, not less than those of 
African origin, pass their lives unhappily, and die 
prematurely. To every race, virtuous principles 
are alike necessary ; and it is of equal importance 
to all. to be placed in circumstances fivorahle to 
the'cLiltivation of their higher powers. It is plain 
that the free blacks in this ccuntry do not, at pres- 
ent, enjoy a fair opportunity for the cultivation of 
their talents, nor can they properly be expected to 
become, in the highest degree, useful, as members 
of the com un ties to which they belong, until 
greatly changed by the influence of moral and 
religious instruction. 



LETTER VI. 



Baltimore, July 16, 1835. 

Fkom 1790 to 1810 the number of slaves In 
Maryland had slowly increased ; but from that pe- 
riod until the present time it has gradually dimin- 
ished. In 1790 the whole number was 103,036, 
in 1810, 111,502, and in 1830, 102,994. This 
diminution has been occasioned, partly by manu- 
mission, and partly by removals to other states, 
through the operation of the domestic slave trade. 
The free colored population, on the contrary, has 
rapidly increased during the whole period from 
1790 to the present time. In 1790 their number 
was but 8,043 ; in 1830 it had increased to 52,938. 
The augmentation has been owing to the joint 
operation of manumissions and natural increase. 
In 1830, the slaves in this state were only about 
twice as numerous as the free people of color, but 
in 1790 they were nearly in the proportion of 13 
to 1. It is obvious, therefore, that should there 
be no change of policy in the state, slavery will ter- 
minate at no very distant period, by the operation 
of causes now in progress ; and it is equally plain, 



42 

that when that period arrives, the number of free 
blacks in the state will be such, that the public 
welfare will depend greatly upon the character 
which they shall have assumed. If virtuous and 
intelligent, they will add much to the prosperity 
and strength of the state, but should they possess 
a different character, they will nrjaterlaily impair 
Its strength, and impede its progress in improve- 
ment. 

Tlie proportion between the colored and white 
population of this state is nearly the same now as 
In 1790, viz. 10 colored to 19 white persons. A 
little more than one third of the whole population 
therefore Is colored, and, under the operation of 
existing causes, will continue nearly the same. 

There is one fact in relation to the two classes 
of colored persons in this state which merits par- 
ticular attention. More than one fourth of the 
whole number of free blacks Is found in Baltimore 
alone, while of the whole number of slaves in the 
state less than one twenty-fifth part reside in this 
city. In this state, slave labor, employed In agri- 
culture, has long since ceased, with few exceptions, 
to be profitable ; and to this cause most of the 
manumissions of the slaves, as well as their emigra- 
tion to other states, are to be attributed. The em- 
ployment of free blacks in agricultural labor has 
not been found to yield a greater profit than that 



43 



of slaves, and the residence of the former in the 
neighborhood of plantations where slaves are em- 
ployed, is disliked by the planter. Hence the 
emancipated negroes generally leave the country, 
and congregate in the cities and larger towns, in 
such numbers that it is not easy for them, even if 
so disposed, to find profitable employment. If the 
labor of colored men could be made profitable in 
the cities, a greater number of slaves would be em- 
ployed there, since they are of so little value in 
the country ; and the fact that few are thus em- 
ployed proves that their labor in the cities cannot 
be made profitable to their owners. 

That the moral and physical condition of the 
free negroes in Baltimore is worse than that of the 
slaves, is a fact to which all intelligent men with 
whom I have conversed most fully bear testimony. 
The satisfaction which arises from the conscious- 
ness of freedom, or of having escaped from the 
control of a master, they of course enjoy ; but, 
independently of this, the condition of most of 
them is represented as more depressed than it was 
while they were slaves. They are not compelled 
to labor, it is true ; but, on the other hand, they do 
not enjoy the advantages which would spring from 
labor, in the preservation of their health and morals, 
and in providing wholesome food and necessary 
clothing. Allusion was made in my last letter to 



44 

the great mortality of the free colored people of 
Baltimore, when compared with that of the slaves. 
During each of the eleven years which have passed 
since a record of the comparative numbers of deaths 
among the slaves and the free colored people has 
been kept, it appears that the mortality has been 
considerably greater among the latter than the for- 
mer. The following table is extracted from the 
records of the Board of Health, and exhibits the 
numbers of each of the three classes who have died 
in Baltimore during the several years specified, from 
1824 to 1834 inclusive. 



Year. 


Free Col'd. 


Slaves. 


Whites. 


Total. 


1824 


3G8 


48 


1052 


1468 


1825 


332 


57 


1156 


1545 


1826 


429 


97 


1396 


1922 


1827 


357 


60 


1081 


1498 


1828 


340 


100 


1262 


1702 


1829 


429 


100 


1320 


1849 


1830 


478 


89 


1519 


2086 


1831 


514 


118 


1676 


2308 


1832 


998 


164 


2410 


3572 


1833 


534 


98 


1773 


2405 


1834 


596 


115 


2036 


2747 



In 1832 and 1834 the city was visited by the 
cholera. 

In 1820 and 1830 the city contained as follows : 



Year. 


Free ColM. 


Slaves. 


Whites. 


Total. 


1820 


10,294 


4,357 


48,087 


62,738 


1830 


14,783 


4,124 


62,083 


80,990 



45 

From these data it appears that the proportion"^ 
of deaths annually among the slaves is nearly as 
1 to 44 of the whole number ; among the whites, 
1 to 38, and among the free colored people, 1 to 
29. The chances for life therefore among the 
slaves in Baltimore appear to be considerably 
greater than even among the whites, and far 
greater than that of the free blacks ; the deaths 
among the slaves being only about two thirds as 
great as among the free people of color. 

This remarkable longevity of the slaves is an 
interesting fact, in its relation to the salutary effect 
of temperance and regular exercise upon human 
life, and illustrates, in a remarkable manner, the 
advantages which would spring from the general 
adoption of correct habits in these respects. Many 
causes tending to shorten the lives of slaves, might 
be avoided by freemen ; and hence the lives of the 
latter might be prolonged in even a greater degree 
than those of the former. 

It is much to be wished that we possessed the 
means of extending this comparison, to the entire 
population of this and of the more Southern States. 
It would throw much light upon the condition of 
these three very distinct classes in southern soci- 
ety, and, though it could never exhibit slavery as 
a desirable state, it might serve to show what 
were its essential evils, in distinction from such as 



46 



are accidental. Its most important practical use 
' would probably be, to convince every philanthro- 
pist that liberty is not the only boon which can be 
bestowed upon the colored race, but that, along 
with this, it is necessary that their moral and 
intellectual habits should be greatly improved, 
since otherwise liberty itself may prove no real 
blessing. 



LETTER VIL 



Baltimore, July 16, 1835. 

This evening I called upon a Presbyterian 
clergyinan of this city, to whom I had letters, and 
who, knowing my connection with the American 
Union, turned the conversation to a discussion of 
the principles and objects of tliat society. Of these 
he highly approved, but expressed his doubts of 
the utility of any association at the north for the 
benefit of southern slaves. In his view, the only 
way to approach this subject successfully is through 
the medium of the Colonization Society. Of this, 
he remarked, there is no great jealousy at the 
south, but every northern plan of benevolence to 
the slave would be rejected, if for no other reason, 
yet for this, that it originated in the wrong quarter. 

The very measures, however, which the Union 
proposes, are those now pursued by this gentle- 
man and his friends. They are organizing con- 
gregations for public worship, and Sabbath schools 
for the education of the children, and nothino^ is 
wanting, but the systematic and sustained exertions 



48 

which would spring from a more perfect organiza- 
tion, to give efficiency to their philanthropic labors. 

In reply to my inquiries respecting the means of 
religious instruction enjoyed by the colored people, 
I was informed that there are three or four con- 
gregations of colored Methodists in this city, in 
regular connection with the Methodist church, and 
one or two of Independent Methodists. There is 
also one congregation of Episcopalians, and one of 
Presbyterians, with both of which, as well as with 
those previously mentioned, flourishing Sabbath 
schools are connected. When we consider, how- 
ever, that the number of blacks of both classes is, 
at the present time, more than 20,000, it is ob- 
vious that six or eight small congregations will com- 
prise but an inconsiderable 'portion of the whole 
number ; and we ought not to be surprised that, 
with such means of moral and religious improve- 
ment, even freedom itself has hitherto failed to 
elevate them in any considerable degree. 

As the clergyman, of whom I have spoken, has 
enjoyed the best op|)ortunities for becoming ac- 
quainted with the character of the people of color, 
I directed my inquiries particularly to this object. 
He represents them as indolent, and of course ex- 
posed to all the vices which spring from sloth, but 
as in general peculiarly free from the controlling 
influence of the malevolent passions. It is sel- 



49 

dom that they are gniUy of acts of violence and 
outrage ; and in this respect they are very favora- 
bly distinguished from the Irish laborers, who have 
been employed upon the railroads, and other 
similar works in this state. 

In regard to the domestic slave trade, he states 
that no inconsiderable part of it is still carried on 
in an indirect or circuitous manner. The produc- 
tions of Kentucky, and of other Western States, 
their horses, mules, cattle and swine, are driven 
into the Atlantic states, where they are often ex- 
changed for young f^egroes, which are taken to 
the west, and there sold either to slave dealers 
from the south, or to the people of Kentucky and 
the other Western States. In the latter case, the 
Kentuckian probably sells to the southern trader 
an older and more valuable slave, and pockets the 
difference in their value. In this vvay, such slaves 
especially as happen to be disliked by their mas- 
ters, are sent out of the state, and their places sup- 
plied by younger ones, who, when they have at- 
tained to their full strength, will perhaps follow in 
the same path. Family ties are often disregarded 
in this traffic. The slave obtained by barter in 
Virginia, is perhaps so young as to have formed no 
matrimonial connection, but those carried to the 
south are often separated from wives and children. 
The south-western trader wants only those slaves 



50 

who will be immediately serviceable upon the cot- 
ton and sugar plantations. Young children, there- 
fore, are for his purpose of no value. The object 
of the planter is to get as much labor as possible 
from his slaves ; and when they fail, he chooses to 
supply their places by purchasing fresh hands from 
the north. If deprived of this foreign supply, he 
would perceive the necessity of paying more re- 
gard to the lives of his slaves, and of making 
greater efforts for raising their children. 

The following incident, illustrative of this branch 
of trade, was mentioned as having recently occur- 
red in Louisiana. A slave trader had sold a lot 
of slaves to a planter, and among the rest was a 
young mother with her infant child. After the 
bargain was completed for the whole number, the 
planter offered to return the infant, as of no value 
to him. This offer aroused the indignation of the 
trader, who considered it a reflection upon his 
humanity, and demanded, in great fury, whether 
the planter considered him such a monster, that he 
would be willing to tear the infant from its mother's 
bosom ! The simple truth was, that the planter, 
well knowing the usual mortality in that country 
among young children, and that the full task of a 
field hand was to be exacted from the mother, was 
willing so far to listen to the combined voice of 



51 



humanity and interest, as to leave the child in the 
trader's hands, where its life might he preserved. 

Such humanity is indeed worth little to the poor 
slave, and it is almost a profanation of the term to 
speak of it as influencing the parties in such a trans- 
action. And yet, even such a traffic as this does 
not of course render men fond of cruelty for its own 
sake. The love of money may have gained the 
ascendency over every other principle ; but when 
the claims of a master passion are satisfied, other 
and better feelings may influence the conduct. 

It is said that the free blacks in IMaryland are 
not by law excluded from any trade or employment 
which may be practised by the whites, except 
from the vending of spirituous liquors, and from th e 
command of vessels ; and both of these restraints 
have a reference to the slaves, lest they should be 
allured to intemperate habits, or should be secretly 
conveyed to distant ports. In New York, on the 
contrary, a colored man, it is said, cannot drive his 
own hack or cart. 



LETTER VIII. 



Baltimore, July 17, 1835. 

In this city there appears to be no strong attach- 
ment to slavery, and no wish to perpetuate it. If 
the slaves were equally distributed, not one white 
person in fifteen could be a slave holder ; and it is 
probable that in fact not one in thirty owns a slave. 
The majority, therefore, are not bound to the insti- 
tution by any interest, either real or supposed, and 
are in reality longing for its final extinction. Of 
this, however, they would be far more desirous 
were they not compelled, by their situation, daily 
to observe the unfortunate condition of the free 
blacks, and to be impressed by the belief that the 
situation of the slaves is not in fact improved by 
their emancipation. Could they see them in a 
course of progressive elevation, after they have 
gained their liberty, they would, in general, become 
eager for the entire aboh'tion of the system of 
slavery. The efforts of the friends of the race in 
this state, should, as it seems to me, be principally 
directed to this object, that when there shall be 
added to the free white inhabitants of the state, a 



54 

free black population amounting to more than one 
third of the whole, it may be a population which 
shall increase the happiness and resources of the 
state, instead of hanging as a burden upon it, or 
menacing the destruction of all that is valuable in 
its institutions. No state can ever flourish while 
more than one third of its inhabitants are sunk in 
ignorance, without industry and without moral 
principle. 

After all that is said, however, respecting the 
unfortunate situation of the free colored people in 
this city, they appeared to me, in passing through 
various parts of the old and new town, to be about 
as well dressed as the poorer class of whites, and 
better than some of the Irish, and especially the 
Irish children, with whom I met. 

An interesting case of a negro now confined in 
the penitentiary was mentioned to me this morn- 
ing) by a gentlemen who has long been the 
teacher of a Bible class in that establishment. 
The crime for which this negro is confined is that 
of stealing his own ivife, who is a slave. 

By the laws of God, a man is not only per- 
mitted, but required to leave, when it is necessary, 
his father and his mother, to whom by the ties of 
nature he is most tenderly attached, who have 
watched over him in infancy, and have loved and 
cherished him in childhood and youth — to leave 



55 

even these, and his brethren and sisters, his earhest 
and dearest companions, and to "cleave to his 
wife." And yet here is a system of man's inven- 
tion, which is at variance with this original purpose 
of tlie Creator, to such a degree, that for the sake 
of a stranger to their blood, the husband shall be 
deprived of the society of his wife, and shall be 
confined with malefactors for attempting to dissolve 
a relation, which neither nature nor their own 
consent had formed. But it is useless to inveio-h 

o 

against particular acts of cruelty, arising from the 
unnatural relation of master and slave. They are 
often, in all their cruelty, but the necessary and 
natural results of this relation, and may be essen- 
tial to its continuance. As well might we com- 
j)lain that ice is cold, or that fire is hot — they must 
continue so, or cease to exist. 

I have just returned from a visit to a colored 
preacher of tlie name of Livingston. He belongs 
to the Episcopal church, and was in Boston about 
two years since, soliciting funds to enable his parish- 
ioners to pay a debt which they had contracted in 
building their church. He obtained, for this pur- 
pose, five or six hundred dollars, but they still need 
as much more to free them from their embarrass- 
ment. I cannot but hope that when this fact is 
known to tlie wealthy members of that church, 
with which this humble branch is coiu:iected, they 



56 

will at once relieve them from their debt, and thus 
encourage them to persevere in their laudable 
efforts for self-improvement. For this purpose, a 
correspondence might be opened with the bishop 
of this diocese, or with the reverend clergy of 
that church residing in this city, from whom all 
necessary information respecting this feeble church 
could be obtained. 

Mr. Livingston has a school of colored children 
of both sexes, whom he instructs in the elements 
of education. For this purpose his church, during 
the week, is converted into a school house, and 
his pupils are instructed upon the Lancasterian 
plan. His present number of pupils is about 
eighty, and his terms for tuition are from $]'50 to 
^1*75 a quarter. 

He informs me that there is another school in 
the Old Town, containing forty or fifty pupils. 
This is kept by John Fortie, a colored man 
belonffino- to the Methodist church, whose father is 
regarded by the colored members of that church 
as a venerable patriarch among their preachers. 
William Watkins, another colored member of the 
Methodist church, has a school of sixty or seventy 
in Sharp street ; and besides these there are five or 
six schools kept by females, including one which is 
taught by the Sisters of Charity. Mr. Livingston 
says that there is no free school for colored children 



57 

in Baltimore, and that only a small proportion of 
them ever learn to read. A considerable additional 
number might be taught in the schools which now 
exist, and new schools might be opened for their 
benefit, if a little exertion were made for this pur- 
pose by the wealthy and benevolent. 

The children in Mr. Livingston's school looked 
well, w^ere very decently clad, and appeared to be 
intelligent. They are almost exclusively the chil- 
dren of free parents. 

In reply to my inquiries respecting the condition 
and prospects of the colored people in the city, 
Mr. L. says that they are decidedly improving. 
The act of 1813, the operation of which was 
much feared by them, has remained almost wholly 
inoperative. He says that the whole colored popu- 
lation, with scarce an exception, is opposed to 
colonizing in Africa. They do not believe that 
the plan was intended for their benefit, but for that 
of the whites. He says they have letters circula- 
ting among them, purporting to have been written 
by some who have been sent out to Africa, and 
speaking in disparaging terms of that country. 
"No man," he observes, " will be viewed by the 
colored people as their friend, who advocates the 
cause of colonization." The abolitionists, on the 
contrary, are in high favor with all of them. Mr. L. 
says, that if their dislike to colonization is a preju- 
5 



58 



dice, it will be best removed by enlightening them, 
so that they may better understand their own 
interest. Should they be able to see those advan- 
tages in emigration, which the friends of coloniza- 
tion believe to exist, he is sure that emigrants will 
not be wanting. 



''" ^ LETTER IX. 



..,.■ Baltimore, July 17, 1835. 

There is considerable diversity in the opinions 
of gentlemen with whom I converse, respecting 
the situation of the free people of color, but all 
agree that it is one of very gn^at depression. h\ 
general, they pronounce their condition to be worse 
than that of the slaves in everytliing, except the 
consciousness of freedom : but in this comparison, 
they have especially in view the situation of do- 
mestic servants, not of those upon the plantations, 
with wliose condition they are less familiar. 

I have been much interested to-day in an interview 
with several of the officers of the Maryland Colo- 
nization Society. It was delightful to find, in the 
midst of slavery, men wlio feel deeply for tb.e con- 
dition of the slave, and who delijjht in doino- oood 
to him, not only in the way in wliich they are called 
to act officially, but in all other modes which an 
enlightened humanity may propose. The pros- 
pects of this society, under \he munificent patron- 
age of the state, are of the most encouraging kind. 
The location of the colony at Cape Palmas seems 



60 

to have been particularly fortunate ; and notwith- 
standing the general prejudice of the people of 
color against the plan of colonization, this society 
has no difficulty in obtaining, at all times, a suffi- 
cient number of the most desirable colonists. 

They have adopted the principle, in its fullest 
extent, of carrying to Africa no colonist who does 
not go voluntarily. A resolution to this effect was 
passed unanimously by the Board of Managers, on 
the 2d of May, 1835. Its passage was occasioned 
by an application to them to send to their colony 
thirty-five manumitted slaves, two or three of whom 
were unwilling to go, although their reluctance 
prevented the emigration of the rest, who were 
desirous of removing, but were unwilling, on ac- 
count of family connections, to be separated from 
them. 

The Act of 1831-2, many of the provisions of 
which have been thought to bear very hardly upon 
the slave, appears, so far as its objectionable fea- 
tures are concerned, to be nearly a dead letter. It 
was passed at a period of excitement, and will 
probably never be executed in its rigor, except 
during some similar state of public feeling. The 
provision, that a slave emancipated under this act, 
and not consenting to freedom upon the prescribed 
conditions, should return to slavery, has not been 
enforced, so far as I could learn. In more than a 
single case. 



61 

The manumissions made since the passage of the 
law of 1831-2j are required to be reported to the 
Board of Managers of the State Colonization So- 
ciety, and to be recorded in their office. The 
number hitherto reported amounts to 1026; but 
the returns are so incomplete, that the whole num- 
ber of manumissions, in a little more than two 
years, is supposed to be not less than 1500. These, 
it should be remembered, have been voluntarily 
emancipated, by the gradual progress of humane 
^ sentiments ; and when the high price, which slaves 
have for some time borne in the market, is con- 
sidered, we may well be surprised, as well as de- 
lighted, with the evidence of good feeling and 
christian principle evinced by these acts. At the 
present prices, they might have been sold for more 
than half a miUion of dollars — a great sum to be 
relinquished as a voluntary sacrifice to principle, in 
so bad a world as this. A small part only of these 
slaves have been liberated for the purpose of being 
sent to the colony ; so that the Colonization So- 
ciety seems not, in this instance, to have operated 
injuriously upon general and unconditional manu- 
mission. 

By the law of this state before referred to, slaves 
may be permitted, for peculiarly good conduct, to 
remain in the state after manumission ; and, in 
construing the law, it is held by the courts having 



62 

cognizance of such cases, tliat the testimony of one 
respectable witness, that he is well acquainted with 
the party, and that he possesses a fair character for 
honesty and temperance, is sufficient to secure to 
him this privilege. In some of the more Southern 
States, a similar privilege is occasionally conferred 
by special legislative enactment; and nothing but 
some uncommon benefit, either of a public or 
private nature, is sufficient to entitle the slave to 
such a distinction. 

This afternoon J have visited the penitentiary, 
in company with Mr. A., a worthy member of the 
Methodist church, to whom I have before alluded 
as engaged in teaching a Bible class in this prison, 
and to whom I am indebted for many attentions, 
and especially for pointing out numerous sources 
of valuable information. It appears that the 
Methodist preachers stationed in Baltimore, have 
long been accustomed to give religious instruction 
to the inmates of this prison, not only without re- 
ward, or expectation of reward, but without the 
least recognition of their services on the part of the 
government of the state. The same is true of the 
instruction given in the Sabbath school by members 
of the same church. It was pleasing to perceive, 
by the smiles of recognition on the part of the 
convicts wherever my friend appeared, that grati- 



63 

tude, on their part at least, was not withheld for 
such important and self-denying services. 

The penitentiary is a state institution, and the 
modern improvements in state prisons have not yet 
been fully introduced into its management, on 
account of the unsuitable nature of its buildings. 
These are now u.ndergoing a change, to adapt them 
to a discipline like that practised at Auburn, and 
at other similar state prisons. - 

My inquiries at the penitentiary were greatly 
facilitated by the politeness of the warden, Mr. 
Jones, a member of the Methodist church, and a 
gentleman of great benevolence, as well as energy 
of character, and also by the clerk of the institution, 
by whom I was furnished with copies of the re- 
ports of the prison for the last four years. From 
, these reports it appears that the commitments for 
this period have been, 

Whites. Colored. 

\ : Males, 177 198 

•• Females, 10 78 

Total, 187 276 

Of the whole number, therefore, committed in 
four years, about three fifths have been colored, 
and two fifths white. None of these are committed 
for a shorter period than two years, although some 
of them were convicted of thefts in which the value 



64 

of the article stolen did not exceed fifty cents. 
Slaves are not sent to the penitentiary ; and hence 
it will be seen that the whole number of colored 
convicts is furnished by the free blacks, amounting, 
at the last census, to no more than 52,938, while 
\he white population was 291,108, 



LETTER X. 



Baltimore, July 17, 1835. 

From the statements in my last letter, you will 
perceive that, were the commitments to the peni- 
tentiary proportioned equally among the whites 
and free blacks, the latter would be to the former 
as 4 to 22, while in fact they are as 13 to 22. 

It is said that the cases of recommitment among 
the colored convicts are fewer than among the 
whites ; and there is other evidence, also, that the 
former are more frequently reformed by their pun- 
ishment than the latter. Most of the prisoners in 
the penitentiary are confined for theft ; and of the 
88 female convicts, w^hite and black, 82 are con- 
fined for this crime. 

The besetting sin of the free colored people, 
as I have repeatedly remarked, is sloth ; and this, 
in connection with their imperfect moral discipline, 
leads to the commission of those crimes for which 
they are so severely punished. It is said also that in 
those counties where there is the greatest number of 
slaves, the free blacks are regarded with peculiar 
suspicion, and are prosecuted for small crimes, for 



66 

the purpose of sending them away from the neigh- 
borhood of the plantations. Very few of them, 
after being released from their confinement, ever 
return to their old residence. The greater part 
remain in Baltimore. 

It is well known that among the whites at the 
south, there is little dislike to the persons of the 
blacks, in comparison with that wdiich is felt at the 
north. Hence they are constantly seen in the 
same carriages with the white members of the 
family ; and black nurses are often employed for 
young children, who continue to sleep with and to 
take care of them until they are five or six years 
old. 

A clergyman of the Methodist church, with 
whom I conversed this morning respecting the 
condition of the free people of color, represents it 
as in general exceedingly deplorable, both in re- 
gard to their moral state and their external cir- 
cumstances. Their poverty and ignorance, he 
supposes might be remedied, could they be in- 
duced to practise industry, but they do not feel 
sufficiently the motives to exertion to enable them 
to rise above their present unfortunate situation. 
It is probably too much to expect, that a people 
sunk in ignorance, as are the African race in this 
and in every other country, should be brought at 
once to feel the motives to exertion, in that degree 



67 

which their situation demands. Could they be 
trained under a system of common school educa- 
tion, and especially could they form separate com- 
munities, where they would see none in a hopeless 
degree superior to themselves, it might be satisfac- 
torily known, whether they are capable of feeling, 
in their full extent, the influence of those motives 
which lead other communities to put forth great 
and constant exertions to advance in Improvement. 
Such an experiment is now making, but under 
great disadvantages, in Hayti, and the world is 
looking with solicitude to its final result. 

During my former residence at the south, as 
well as upon my present journey, I have heard It 
objected both to the slaves and the free blacks, 
that they are backward to aid each other, when in 
poverty or distress. It seems difficult to reconcile 
this fact with their general kindness towards the 
white members of those families with wdiich they are 
connected. Instances of this latter trait of char- 
acter have so often fallen under my notice, that it 
would not only be doing injustice to them, but 
violence to my own feelings, not to acknowledge 
their voluntary acts of kindness to a race from 
which they have received many wrongs. ;;^ 

The following case is introduced for the pur- 
pose of showing some of the difficulties by which 
the conscientious master feels himself to be sur- 



68 

rounded. A clergyman of this state, distinguished 
for his piety and talents, and who had determined 
never to be connected with slavery, found himself 
suddenly, by the legacy of a relative residing at 
a distance, the owner of twenty or thirty slaves. 
He resolved not to continue to hold them in sla- 
very, and as soon as his other duties would permit, 
he made them a visit for the purpose of adopting 
measures to free himself from so great a burden. 
He assembled them together, and told them that 
he was unwilling to hold them in slavery, or sell 
them to another master; that the laws did not 
permit him to liberate them with the intention of 
having them continue in the state, and that even 
were it in his power, he should be unwilling to do 
it, with the certainty that their situation would be 
in every respect worse than it then was. Equal 
objections existed to sending them to the Northern 
States, where they are not wanted, and where their 
previous habits had disqualified them to struggle 
with the untried difficulties which would surround 
them. 

He told them that one remedy remained — that 
they might be liberated and remove to Africa : that 
for this purpose he was willing not only to set 
them at liberty, but to furnish them with all the 
funds necessary for their removal and comfortable 
settlement in the colony. He then explained to 



69 

them the advantages which, in his view, would 
result from their emigration, but found them wholly 
incredulous, and opposed to removal. Some of 
them did not even believe that there was such a 
place as Cape Palmas, and if there were, they 
could not believe that it would be for their benefit 
to go to the colony. They even suspected, such 
was their extreme ignorance and distrust of the 
whites, that the negroes who leave this country for 
the colony, are carried to the south and sold as 
slaves. 

He asked them if they had not full confidence 
in his word. They replied that they believed him 
to be sincere, but that he might himself be de- 
ceived, as he had never been at Cape Palmas ; 
that if he could tell them from his own personal 
knowledge, that it was best for them to go to 
Africa, they should believe him. He then pro- 
posed to them to select one of their number to go 
out as their agent, and explore the colony, ])romis- 
ing to defray the expense, and to permit tliem to be 
governed by his report. To this proposal they did 
not object, but no one of them was found willing 
to engage in such a mission. 

The consequence is, that this clergyman is still, 
what he most of all dislikes to be — a slave holder. 
His duty may perhaps be plain to many of our 
northern friends who have never crossed the Hud- 



70 



son, but to those whose eyes are perhaps dazzled 
by too near a view, it is encompassed with great 
difficulties. And yet this is substantially the case 
of thousands, who, contrary to their own wishes, 
have, by the laws of the states in which they reside, 
become the owners of slaves. 



LETTER XI. 



,- Baltimore, July 17, 1835. 

The facts stated at tlie close of my last letter 
have been verified by a particular conversation with 
the clergyman alluded to, who expressed his deep 
concern at tlie embarrassing situation in which he 
has been placed. He has never attempted in any 
way to increase his property by their means, nor 
will he consent to do so. He waits but for an op- 
portunity to place them in a better situation, and 
will then not only be willing, but will rejoice, to 
liberate them. He remarks that a disposition to 
emancipate their slaves is very prevalent among 
the slave holders of this state, could they see any 
way to do il consistently with the true interest of 
the slave, but that it is their universal belief, that 
no means of doing this is now presented, except 
that of colonizing them in Africa. ; 

He states also that there is not only a lament- 
able want of religious instruction for the colored 
people, but that much which they receive is of the 
most imperfect kind, especially that which is given 



72 



by colored preachers. The forms of the Metho- 
dist church are in general most pleasing to the 
negroes in this state, and to that church they are 
most fond of attaching themselves. The black 
preachers have the advantage of understanding the 
feelings of their hearers, and of being understood by 
them ; but they are so illiterate that their instruc- 
tions are comparatively of little value. 

There is but one sentiment among those with 
whom 1 have conversed in this city, respecting the 
possibility of the white and colored races living 
peaceably together in freedom, nor during my 
residence at the south, and my subsequent inter- 
course with the southern people, did I ever meet 
with one, who believed that it would be possible for 
the two races to continue together- after a general 
emancipation.! Such unanimity should not be 
overlooked by theorists, if destitute of personal ac- 
quaintance with the constitution of southern so- 
ciety. The great experiment, which is now making 
in the British West Indies, will eventually settle 
this question ; but it must be remembered that this 
experiment is but begun. It has been made too 
by a legislature, whose constituents, as well as 
themselves, will be but little affected by the result. 
Should every white man be compelled to leave the 
West India islands, the fair fields of England and 
her venerable institutions would remain unaffected ; 



73 

but when once the slaves of the south are liberated, 
they form an integral part of the population of the 
country, and must influence its destiny for ages, — 
perhaps forever. 

The Irish and other foreigners are, to a consider- 
able extent, taking the place of colored labor- 
ers, and of domestic servants, even in this city, 
where there are probably at this time nearly 20,000 
free colored persons, and 3,000 or 4,000 slaves. 
The Irish are found in public as well as in private 
houses, mingled with the blacks, and performing the 
same offices ; and the great public works are exe- 
cuted by them exclusively. It is obvious, that this 
is not owing to the want of colored laborers in suf- 
ficient numbers to perform all the services which 
may be required. It is to be attributed either to 
the physical inability, or to the comparatively idle 
habits of the free blacks, who, in general, will not 
labor regularly ; and to supply their waste of time, 
it becomes necessary to employ foreigners, who, as 
a class, are far more industrious than the negroes. 
On the whole, the Irish are fast encroaching upon 
the territory of the blacks, and threaten ultimately 
to supplant them wherever slavery may cease. 
In this view, the question of the ultimate issue of 
slavery in this country is assuming, in connection 
w^ith Irish immigration, a new and most interesting 
form. It is still uncertain how far the climate of 
6 



74 



the south will permit the Irish laborers to proceed 
in tlieir encroachments ; but there is not a little 
evidence that they will be able to penetrate far 
into the present dominions of slavery. 

A gentleman from South Carolina, who had no 
theory upon this subject to support, but whose 
remark was made casually in the course of conver- 
sation, recently stated to me his conviction, that 
free colored laborers would never be employed in 
any considerable numbers in that state, because 
the Irish and other foreigners were found as labor- 
ers to be so much more profitable. It is then at 
least possible, that we see in this influx of foreign- 
ers, the means by which slavery is to be progres- 
sively driven south, and gradually confined to com- 
paratively narrow limits. The negroes increase 
rapidly while they continue in slavery ; but when 
liberated, their increase seems to be checked ; and 
it is possible, that at soine future period, the more 
rapid advance of the white population in all the 
states which shall be free, will leave the blacks in 
a small and continually decreasing minority. 

There appears to be but one mode of preventing 
the result to which I have now alluded. Should the 
character of the negroes undergo that great change, 
in consequence of the influence of freedom, which 
many have anticipated, and which all desire, their 
progressive diminution may be in part prevented. 



■•'75 

So far as the experiment has yet been made in this 
country, there are but few and feeble indications 
that a remarkable change of character is likely to 
result from their possession of freedom, while they 
shall continue mingled with the white population. 
In the states where they have been longest free, 
they still possess 'substantially the same character. 
They have rarely risen to intellectual distinction ^ 
or to the possession of wealth ; and should this fact 
be attributed to the depressing influence of preju- 
dice, which will not permit them to enjoy a fair field 
for enterprize, there is reason to apprehend that 
this prejudice will long continue to operate in full 
force, and that the relative rank of the two races 
will remain substantially the same that it now is. 
If the feeling of aversion which now subsists be- 
tween them shall continue, its future effects will 
probably be the same; but between native Ameri- 
cans and the Irish emigrants, there is no distinction 
which education and a change of external circum- 
stances may not remove ; and they must, in the 
natural course of events, soon blend into one com- 
mon mass. It is then possible, that the gradual 
extinction of the African race in this count ry is 
prevented only by their state of slavery. 



LETTER XII. 



Baltimore, July 18, 1835. 

I HAVE just bad an Interview with Mr. S., one 
of the smaller slave dealers in this city. I intro- 
duced myself by inquiring at bis office the present 
price of good "field hands," from 18 to 25 years 
old. He says that 'Mikely fellows" are worth 
from $500 to $'650 : girls of the same age, from 
$300 to $500; but to bring the latter price, they 
must be uncommonly fine ones, as they are worth, 
for the field, only three or four hundred. He says 
that slaves of all kinds are now very scarce in the 
market, and in great demand. He has been trying 
all the week to find some, — has been everywhere, 
far and near, and incurred no small expense, and 
can hear of but one. He is at the jail, and is a 
" prime fellow — as likely a nigger as he has ever 
seen, but has a defect in one of his hands, owing 
to some accident which happened when he was 
young." Mr. S. does not believe that he could 
use an axe, but he would be a good field hand. He 
" has the refusal of the fellow," if he shall choose 



78 

to take him; — and has offered $'500 for him, but 
his owner refused to take it. Mr. S. thinks, how- 
ever, " that with his defect, it is as much as he is 
worth." 

Mr. S. says he has " a little girl — bright mu- 
latto — seven years old, whom he will be glad to 
sell ; as fine a servant as he ever saw ; quick and 
handy — will go to market for any small article, as 
well as many who are much older." He will sell 
her for $250. 

He informs me that there are a dozen or more 
in town engaged in " the business," but none of 
them are do'in^ much, as necrroes are so scarce. A 
good deal however is doing in the District of Co- 
lumbia, especially by the firm of Franklin and 
Armfield. The greatest part of the slaves from 
the District are sent to the Southern States by 
water; but some during the summer go by land. 
A friend of Mr. S., who was in his office during 
our conversation, remarked that he met about three 
hundred last summer, who were all sent over land 
by one house. Mr. S. thinks that " hands will be 
plentier" in a few weeks, when the harvest is 
over. He concluded the conversation, which he 
had carried on in the style of a northern horse- 
jockey, by asking how many hands I wished to 
purchase. I told him that I had not yet com- 
pleted my arrangements, and thought I should re- 



79 

main in this quarter two or three weeks, until the 
harvest was gathered. Finding that he had taken 
me for a southerner, and not caring to undeceive 
him by answering other questions wliich he might 
put, I took leave without further conversation. 

After leaving the office of Mr. S., I called upon 
a member of the Society of Friends, to whom I 
had letters, and who has long taken a deep inter- 
est in the condition of the people of color. He is 
of opinion that their situation, especially that of the 
free blacks, is improving. He does not know, 
however, that, as a class, they are more respected 
than they were formerly ; but individuals among 
them are treated with much respect. There is 
not, however, as he states, the slightest disposition 
to permit even these to enjoy either social or po- 
litical equality. 

The majority of the people of Maryland he 
supposes to be in favor of some plan for prospec- 
tive and gradual emancipation ; but such is the 
division of political power among the counties, that 
a small number of white inhabitants, in those 
counties which possess the most slaves, are able 
to control the legislation of the state. The coun- 
ties are all entitled to an equal vote in the legisla- 
ture, although in some there are not more than 
eight or nine thousand white inhabitants, and in 
others, four or five times that number. 



80 

Of the details of the domestic slave trade, he 
observes, that it is difficult to obtain much informa- 
tion, as its operations are in some degree concealed 
from the public eye. The trade is not a clandes- 
tine one, but being offensive to the feelings of a 
large portion of the community, it is in a great 
measure withdrawn from public observation. There 
is an establishment near tlie end of Pratt street, 
owned by Mr. W., who has made himself very 
rich by this trade. He has, like the other large 
slave dealers, a prison, or slave pen, of his own, in 
which he keeps the slaves until a cargo is com- 
pleted. They are then carried on board the vessel, 
usually at night, and. immediately sail for New 
Orleans. The business is conducted by him, and 
by the other regular traders, in such a manner, that 
there is never any suspicion of unfairness in regard 
toth eir mode of acquiring slaves. In this respect, 
at least, their business is conducted in an honorable 
manner. 

Mr. W. has a brother at the south, I believe in 
Louisiana, who receives the negroes shipped from 
this port, and disposes of them to purcliasers. On 
hearing of such an agency as this, one is ready to 
conceive, that the man who has grown wealthy by 
receiving and selling these poor and defenceless 
creatures, must be in all respects a monster — one 
whose diabolical spirit must manifest itself in his 



81 



very countenance, and in all the intercourse of pri- 
vate life, so that all men, and especially the unfor- 
tunate slaves, will instinctively shrink from him as 
from a demon. And yet, how wide from the 
truth would such a conclusion be ! This very 
man is reported, upon the best authority, to be a 
most mild and indulgent master, and an upright 
and scrupulously honest man. His recommenda- 
tion of a slave will instantlv raise his value in the 
market, for his word is implicitly relied upon by 
all who know him. When he makes his appear- 
ance among his slaves, they gather around him 
with every demonstration of affection ; and even 
the little children manifest the most eager solici- 
tude to share in his attentions. 

Such facts as these may to sopje appear to be 
inconsistent with the established laws of human 
nature. They exhibit a man as having the in- 
humanity to devote himself to the acquisition of 
wealth by trafficking in the miseries of the already 
wretched African, as being the voluntary a(i;enl for 
receiving the husband who has been torn from his 
wife, and the wife who has been forcibly separated 
from her husband and her children, and for selling 
them into the most hopeless slavery, and yet, un- 
der all these hardening influences, operating ha- 
bitually upon his character, as cultivating, at the 
same time, those gentle manners and kind afFec- 



82 

tions which render him an object of attachment to 
his fellow men, and even to his slaves themselves. 
Such inconsistencies and apparent contradictions in 
human character are, however, by no means un- 
common ; and it would not perhaps be difficult, on 
the other hand, to instance some, who are the de- 
voted friends of the colored race, and of the op- 
pressed of every name, who have cultivated towards 
those whose sentiments are opposed to their own, 
so bitter a hostility, as to have rendered their 
characters in a high degree repulsive. 



LETTER XIII, 



Baltimore, July 18, 1835. 

At the office of the Maryland Colonization So- 
ciety, I have become acquainted with many fiicts, 
throLioh tlie politeness of the a<;ent of the state, 
the Rev. Wm. iM'Kenney, tending to show an 
unexpected readiness, on the part of the slave 
holders in this state, to manumit their slaves. In 
general, there is an expectation that, when libe- 
rated, ihey will go to the colony ; but many cases 
are independent of such a reference. The dispo- 
sition now manifested would doubtless be still more 
common, if tfie present mode of manumission were 
not, on many accounts, one of the worst which 
could be devised. If those only received their 
freedom who were previously prepared by suitable 
discipline and instruction, or who had evinced their 
fitness for this distinction by their superior intelli- 
gence and virtue, freedom would be viewed as the 
reward of peculiar excellence, and of course would 
be sought for by the exhibition of virtuous char- 
acter. If even an opposite plan were steadily 



84 



pursued — if freedom were made the uniform pun- 
ishment of extraordinary crimes, or utter worth- 
lessness, and if, when freed, they were peculiarly 
exposed to contumely and insult — dear as liberty 
is, the virtuous slave might hesitate to purchase it 
at such a price, preferring slavery itself to igno 
miny and general contempt. 

The present mode of manumission, on the con- 
trary, is founded on no principle of utility, either 
to the manumitted s-lave or to his companions who 
continue in bondage. Tliere is no principle of se- 
lection. The subjects are taken indiscriminately, 
according to the accidental caprice or conscientious- 
ness of their owners. No useful impression there- 
fore is made upon the slave; he is left to desire 
freedom, but is not stimulated to virtuous conduct 
in order to obtain it. The treatment of those who 
are manumitted is, indeed, in a (^eat de^^-ree, such 
as it miglit be, if the sole object were to punish 
them for tlieir vices while they were in bondage, 
and to deter others, by their example, from desir- 
ing freedom. This etiect, however, it cannot pro- 
duce, while it is obvious that the severity with 
which they are treated has, in general, no refer- 
ence to their moral character. Few inducements 
are presented to them to rise above their present 
situation, and thus, while the state adds to the 
number of jts freemen, it adds nothing to the vir- 



85 

tue and intelligence of its citizens — nothing to its 
physical or moral resources. 

In farther conversation with the benevolent 
member of the Society of Friends, of whom 1 
have before spoken, he states his full conviction 
that the greatest obstacle, at this time, to the pro-^ 
gressive improvement of the African race in this 
country, is the interference of the people of the, 
north. So long as this continues, he thinks that 
the apprehensions of the south will prevent any 
farther improvement in their condition. 

Advertisements for the purcliase of negroes, and 
for the restoration of runaway slaves, are very 
common in the newspapers of this city, as well as 
in those of Washington. A Mr. P. advertises for 
slaves, nnd requests such as wish to dispose of 
any to call either at ^'Sinner^s Hotcl,^^ or at his 
residence on " Gallows Hill.''^ Certainly these 
are very appropriate places to hail from, when em- 
barking in such a traftic. 

Sunday Evening, July 19, 1835. 

This morning I went, in company with Mr. 
M'Kenney and another friend, to visit the African 
Sabbath school in Sharp street. This school has 
more than four hundred names upon its books, but 



86 



not more than one hundred now attend upon its exer* 
cises, as two schools have recently been formed in 
other places, the members of which formerly be- 
longed to this. The superintendent and teachers, 
as well as the children, are all persons of color. 
With the teachers I conversed freely, and listened 
attentively to the exercises, and have seldom been 
equally gratified by the appearance of any Sabbath 
school. In the teachers I found not only a degree 
of intelligence far superior to what I had expected, 
but a conscientious devotedness to their employ- 
ment, at once the earnest and the evidence of suc- 
cess ; and I have never seen, among the pupils of 
any Sabbath school, more countenances indicative 
of respectable talents, or of good dispositions. 

The clerk of the school, a bright mulatto of an 
uncommonly fine and intelligent countenance, 
apologized for having come in somewhat late, ob- 
serving to us that he had been sent with a bundle 
to the Annapolis steamboat. I could not but 
reflect with sorrow upon the evils which every- 
where spring from a profanation of the Sabbath by 
the owners of stages and steamboats, and by those 
masters who employ their servants in unnecessary 
labors on this day of holy rest — a day so necessary 
to the moral and religious improvement of all, but 
especially of those who enjoy no other day of rest. 
This clerk is a porter in a store ; and few clerks 



87 

in Boston could make a neater book of records 
than liis. 

A gentleman who was present inquired of one 
of the teachers whether there were any slaves in 
the school. He replied that there were a good 
many, and that he himself was one. It appeared 
])owever upon inquiry, that by the will of his 
master, who was dead, he was to be free at the 
age of twenty-eight, and that he had but eighteen 
months more to serve as a slave. When 1 asked 
him whether he should be glad to be free, his 
countenance showed, as he answered, " Yes sir," 
that it was a question which no one, who had been 
a slave, would ever need to ask ; and still his 
master and mistress had been distinguished for their 
kindness to their slaves. His brother too, he told 
us, would soon be free, and his mother was already 
so. Would tl)at those who doubt whether a slave 
prizes freedom, could have seen the joyful looks 
with which this christian slave stated these siniple 
facts in the history of his family. 

The room in which the school was held was 
well fitted up and clean, but the approach to It was 
through a narrow and dirty lane in tlie rear of the 
building. Under the stairs by which we ascended 
to the school room, two swine were dozing away 
the morning, and merely looked up and grunted as 
we passed. It should be remarked, however, that 



these animals act as licensed scavengers in the 
streets of the " monumental city," and are par- 
ticularly active in the neighborhood of the markets. 

At ten o'clock we left the school and repaired to 
the African church in the same street. This 
church, like the school we have just left, belongs to 
the Methodists, and the preacher, this morning, was 
an old colored man. His subject, as he informed 
us, was "Philip's going down to Samaria, and 
preaching on the road to the eunuch and the queen 
of Ethiopia.''' Philip, according to the preacher, 
was told to " go and cotch right hold of the 
chariot," (for so he interpreted the direction " to go 
and join himself to it,") which having done, '' he 
heard the eunuch reading to the queen, and asked 
him what he was reading about." An apology 
was made for the seeming impropriety of Philip's 
being ''so bold as to cotch hold of the chariot and 
to ask a gemman such a question," and the preach- 
er concluded that the evangelist could not be 
blameable, as he only followed his directions, 
^' which," it was thought, " he mought very prop- 
erly do." 

With all his quaintness and ignorance of let- 
ters, the preacher evidently possessed respectable 
talents, and uncommon skill in illustration. He 
warned his hearers against supposing that they 
could enter heaven without love to Christ in their 



89 

hearts ; this he told them was the only ^^free 
passJ^ " If they wanted to go from the south to 
Philadelphia or New York, they knew very well 
that they would be stopped on the way if they had 
not a free pass, and so it would be if they should 
try to enter heaven without a pass containing the 
name and the broad seal of Christ." All this was 
perfectly intelligible to his hearers, w^ho showed in 
their countenances and by their animated responses, 
how thoroughly they entered into the spirit of 
his remarks. The responses of the Methodist 
church seem to be especially adapted to such an 
audience as were there assembled. They serve 
to fix the attention of such hearers, and to cheer 
and animate the preacher, by the interest they 
evince in his performance. Were the preacher 
engaged in pursuing a connected train of thought, 
the responses might perhaps interrupt the attention 
of his audience, but with such a preacher no effect 
of that kind is likely to occur. - . 



LETTER XIV. 



Baltimore, July 19, 1835. 

The responses, of which I spoke at the close of 
my last letter, became, in some instances, so sudden 
and piercing, as to be even startling to one unac- 
customed to such an accompaniment ; but they 
plainly served to arouse the attention of the assem- 
bly in a remarkable degree; and without some 
such device, it would probably be impossible to en- 
gage, for any considerable time, the attention of 
such undisciplined minds. 

On the whole, there was occasion to regret that 
persons so ignorant, should spend their Sabbath in 
listening to instruction which could do so little to 
enlighten their minds ; but, on the other hand, it 
was consoling to reflect, that some of the doctrinal 
principles, and much of the morality of the gospel, 
were thus imparted to them from week to week, 
and that there was conclusive evidence that the 
hearts of many were brought into subjection to the 
gospel of Christ. In the Methodist church, the 
nstruction given upon the Sabbath is followed by 



92 

that of the "class meeting," and by instruction from 
house to house during the week, as the teachers 
have opportunity. By such means the minds of 
the colored people belonging to this church, are 
brought under a course of training to virtuous 
habits, which seems peculiarly adapted to their 
condition. 

This afternoon I visited a colored school and 
congregation, w^io meet in the " old town," and 
are under the patronage of the Presbyterian church. 
Their room, which is a small one, is entirely full, 
though it is but two or three years since the con- 
gregation was formed ; and they are now greatly in 
w'ant of more extended accommodations. Most 
of the children are learning to read ; a kw, how- 
ever, are receiving instruction in catechisms. On 
account of its more recent formation, tliis school is 
less perfectly organized than that in Sharp street ; 
but the teachers have a good spirit, and many of 
the children are very promising. Both here and 
at the school which I visited this morning, I was 
treated with great affection by the teachers, and 
have seldom passed so pleasant a day as this. 
Even tb.e children seemed to have been impressed 
by their teachers with the belief that I was their 
friend, and listened to my conversation with most 
earnest attention. One of the younger classes, 
while not employed by their teacher, I overheard 



93 

disputing whether my name was Mr. Goodman — 
their teacher having told them that a good man 
from Boston was coming to see them. 

The singing at Sharp street, I should have be- 
fore remarked, was excellent, — such as our friend 
Mr. Lowell Mason might perhaps make better, but 
which, I am sure, it would give him exquisite 
pleasure to hear, even prior to any improvement. 
There is, in some of the African voices, a wild and 
touching pathos, which art can never reach. Such 
tones I have often heard at evening, through the 
depths of a southern forest, when the singer evi- 
dently supposed that no ear was listening to the 
melody, save the ear of Him to whom the song 
of devotion was ascendins:. 



Washington, July 20, 1835. 

This morning I left Baltimore by the railroad 
for this city. As I passed from the hotel to the 
depot, I was greeted by the kind and . respectful 
salutations of some of the colored men whom I had 
met at church yesterday, and who were now going 
forth to their daily labors. This was the first morning 
that the locomotive had travelled upon this road ; 
and even now we could proceed in this way no 
farther than to Bladensburg. The whole popu- 
lation, for a considerable distance on each side of 



94 

the road, bad come out to see this novel sight, and 
all appeared to be highly gratified. The animals, 
on the other hand, who bad received no previous 
notice of what was to be expected, seemed to be 
universally taken by surprise, and were generally 
filled with consternation. Cows, horses, pigs and 
turkeys were scampering in all directions, only 
stopping occasionally to take another look at the 
terrific object, and tlien posting oft' with fi-esh speed. 
A bull, however, wliom his whole herd had de- 
serted, stood his ground nobly, and even advanced a 
few paces for the pin-pose of reconnoitering his foe. 
No creature seemed to be indifferent to our move- 
ment, except one young calf, who, with the true 
philosophic nil admirari, appeared to consider the 
whole as a very common affiiir, and in perfect 
accordance with his " firm and unalterable expe- 
rience." 

The road appears to be finished in a superior 
manner, and tlie cars are very large, containing each 
sixty passengers. Like the northern works of a 
similar nature, it has been constructed by the labor 
of Irish emigrants, although the country which it 
traverses is teeming with colored men, who stand 
greatly in need of more profitable employment. 
When our national system of railroads and canals 
shall be completed, they will form a stupendous 
monument of the labors of the Irish emigrants — 



95 

such a monument as few strangers have ever reared 
in their adopted country, since the pyramids of 
Egypt were erected by a subjugated people. 

From Bladensburg the company proceeded in 
a long train of carriages, accompanied by a band of 
music, and entered Washington with sound of 
trumpet, and amidst the greetings of great numbers 
who had assembled to witness the display. 

' ' ' ' ■ July 21. 

This morning I met with an old and valued ac- 
quaintance, who has resided for more than a quar- 
ter of a century in North Carolina, and is familiar, 
not only with the domestic policy, but with the 
peculiar sectional views and interests of the south. 
A foreign education had prepared him to notice 
whatever is peculiar in the organization of south- 
ern society, and his long residence there, under 
circumstances probably more favorable than those 
enjoyed by any other individual in that state, for 
obtaining authentic information,, has deservedly 
given great weight to his opinions upon subjects 
connected with the interests and feelings of the 
south. He has long taken a deep interest in 
the condition of the colored population, and, for 
some years past, has devoted a great part of his 
time to investigations respecting their situation 



96 

and prospects, and to exertions for their improve-* 
ment. 

From him I learn that the feehngs of the col- 
ored people in North Carolina, and in the neigh- 
boring states, have been greatly changed, within a 
few years, on the subject of colonization. For- 
merly many of them were inchned to view that 
project in a favorable light, as affording a good 
opportunity for enterprizing individuals to establish 
themselves in a country where they would be for- 
ever independent of the influence of white men. 
Now they entertain the same dislike to the society, 
which is so common among the colored people of 
the north. To a great extent, they view it as a 
plan to perpetuate slavery. 



LETTER XV. 



/. . Washington, July 21, 1835. 

The real sentiments and feelings of the negroes, 
in respect to their situation, it is very difhcult for 
any white person to ascertain, and for a stranger, 
it is nearly impossible. They regard the white 
man as of a different race from themselves, and as 
having views, feelings and interests which prevent 
his sympathizing fully with theirs. Distrust, even 
of their real friends, is no unnatural consequence 
of the relation which they and their ancestors have 
so long borne to the whites. 

When therefore a white man approaches them 
with inquiries concerning their condition, they are 
at once put upon their guard, and either make in- 
definite and vague replies, or directly contradict 
their real sentiments. The following is the sub- 
stance of many a conversation of the kind to which 
I allude. 

" You have a kind master, I think, Jack." 
" O yes, massa, he very kind, he very good to 
de niggers." " You always have enough to eat 



and drink, I suppose." " Yes, massa, plenty to 
eat ; — massa give all de niggers plenty to eat." 
^' Do you have to work very hard. Jack ? " " O 
no, massa, me no work hard — only sometimes." 
'^ Have you a wife? " "Yes, massa, she live at 
Major B.'s in W. county." " Why, that is a 
great way off: how often does your master let you 
D^o to see her?" "Me ^o to see her and de 

o o 

children once t' a month." "And how long does 
he allow you to be absent from the plantation, 
when you go to see your wife and children ? " 
" I always goes a Friday, and stays till Monday." 
"And suppose you should not come back till 
Tuesday, what then ? " " Why, massa no give me 
pass only to Monday ; must come back den." 
" Or else anybody will flog you that finds you ? " 
"Yes, massa." "Don't }'ou wish. Jack, that 
Major B. would buy you, so that you could live 
with your wife ? " " Massa good massa, me no 
like to leave him — no leave massa." "Well, do n't 
you wish then that your master would buy your 
wife, and bring her here ? " " O yes, massa, me 
like dat very much." " Well, Jack, suppose your 
master would give you your liberty ; I suppose 
you would like that best of all, would you not ? " 
" O no, massa, n)e no want to be free, have good 
massa, take care of me when I sick, never 'buse 
nigger ; no, me no want to be free." 



99 

All this is said with an air of sincerity well fitted 
to produce the impression that the slave does not 
wish for freedom, and that he would not accept it, 
even if offered to him. The master himself, ac- 
customed to hear such replies, though at heart 
aware that no dependence can be placed upon de- 
clarations made in such circumstances, half forgets 
that they are untrue, and repeats them to others, 
and especially to northern men, as evidence that 
no change is necessary in the situation of the slave, 
in order to render him as happy as his nature will 
permit. Nor is it others only who are deceived ; 
the slave himself is probably not always aware of 
the insincerity of his replies. He has perhaps 
never viewed his own emancipation as possible, 
and does not know in what manner he would re- 
ceive a proposition sincerely made of restoring hini 
to freedom. 

But even when he has fully awaked to a sense 
of the value of liberty, and when he sighs in secret 
to obtain the direction of his own conduct, and to 
pursue his own happiness without the control of 
others, he is fully conscious of the danger of ex- 
pressing his new feelings and the visions inspired by 
hope. He knows that he shall be less valued if he 
is suspected of being discontented, and that the 
danger of exchanging his present lot for one still 
worse, will in such case be greatly increased. He 



100 

looks, too, upon all white men, and especially 
strangers, as the friends of his master, and does not 
dare to trust his secret wishes to those who may 
immediately betray him. 

Thus all continue to slumber upon the verge of 
the volcano ; but it is only a feverish sleep, from 
which the slightest sound, which may be mistaken 
for the ^rumbling of the fires in the abyss beneath, 
is sufficient instantly to arouse them. Then they 
look around them, for a moment, with dismay ; but 
the alarm soon subsides, and all sink again into 
repose. Not so however in case of actual insurrec- 
tion. Then the apprehensions and consequent suf- 
ferings of all classes and all ages surpass description. 
The strong and courageous master, whom no 
merely personal danger could appal, who would go 
calmly to meet a foreign enemy, trembles when he 
remembers that his wife and children are exposed 
to a foe who will show no mercy, and with whom 
war is only another name for massacre. Women 
and children, the aged and the helpless, tremble 
before a savage foe, from whom they expect not 
even the generosity which belongs to war in gen- 
eral, though indeed the tender mercies of ordinary 
wars are but cruelties. No more enviable is the 
situation of the slave himself. If indisposed to 
join in the revolt, he is apprehensive that he shall 
be suspected by both parties ; and is terrified by 



101 

fear of the Insurgents, upon the one hand, and of 
the whites, upon the other. In such circumstances, 
the slightest suspicion is often a passport to instant 
death. To repel such dangers the strongest mea- 
sures are felt to he necessary ; and when those who 
are suspected cannot be kept in safety till the dan- 
ger is past, death Is called in to afford that security 
which nothino; else can give. 

In general, however, no danger is felt in the 
villages or large towns, except upon occasions of 
peculiar alarm. The timid mother may indeed 
" clasp her infant closer to her bosom, when she 
hears the sound of the midnight fire-bell," because 
her fears at such an hour excite the image of rob- 
bery and massacre, but commonly little apprehen- 
sion of personal danger is felt, except in more 
lonely situations. 

In every town and village an active and vigilant 
patrol is abroad at such hours of the night as they 
judge most expedient, and no negro dares, after the 
prescribed hour, to be found at a distance from his 
quarters. Great cruelty is often practised by the 
patrols, and such as is not only hard for the slaves, 
but even for the humane master to bear, when 
exercised towards his unoffending slaves. Often 
have 1 known a company of licentious and inebri- 
ated young men sally forth after an evening's 
carousal, and in the stillness of night commence 



102 



their round of domiciliary visits to the quarters of 
the negroes, while their inmates were buried in 
sleep. The principal object of such visits is to ter- 
rify the slaves, and thus secure their good behavior, 
and especially to prevent their wandering about at 
night. If in such case a slave is found at any 
distance from his own home without a pass, he is 
often whipped upon the spot, without judge or 
jury, and with no other limit to the severity of the 
infliction, than such as the drunken caprice of the 
patrols may prescribe. I have known the husband 
thus chastised for being found in company with his 
wife, if he was not able to produce his pass or per- 
mit to visit her on that night. The state of a 
family thus violently disturbed during their slum- 
bers, by the curses, and execrations, and violence 
of irresponsible men, may be in some measure 
conceived. The husband and father is dragged 
out and flogged before his terrified wife and children, 
while the females fear every indignity that such 
ruffians may please to perpetrate. Thus they pro- 
ceed, until exhausted by fatigue and dizzy with the 
fumes of their debauch, when they return to their 
homes, leaving weeping, and dismay, and terror, 
where they found peace and repose. 



LETTER XVI. 



Washington, July 21, 1835. 

While residing some years since in Carolina, 
an old negro, whom I had employed to take care 
of my garden, came to me one day, weeping so 
immoderately that for some time I could not clearly 
ascertain the cause of his distress. At leno^th I 
found that it related to his wife, who lived some 
ten or fifteen miles from the village where I was 
residing. Peter had just then heard that his wife's 
master was about to sell her to a speculator, as the 
negroes call those who trade in slaves, and his 
grief appeared to he inconsolable. I tried to pacify 
him, by telling him that it was probably a false 
report, and that her master would not be willing to 
part with so valuable a servant as I had always 
understood that she was. Peter replied that he 
heard that her master was obliged to sell her in 
order to pay his debts. I then told him, that if 
that were the case, I presumed that he would not 
sell her to a trader, but to some one of his wealthy 
neighbors, so that she might still remain in the 



104 

county. He replied — ^' This is my third wife ; 
both of my other wives were sold to speculators, 
and were carried to the south, and I have never 
heard from them since." In this case, however, 
Providence favored poor Peter. Her master had, 
indeed, been bargaining for her sale, but some 
accidental circumstances had prevented the accom- 
plishment of his purpose. Still it was felt by Peter 
to be but a temporary respite, and the danger of 
separation from her, like the fabled Tartarean rock, 
was always impending over him, and threatening 
every moment to crush him beneath its weight. 

On another occasion, as I was walking at a 
small distance from my house, 1 met a company of 
six or eight negroes, who were upon their way to 
Alabama or Mississippi. At the moment when I 
came up, they, with the trader to whom they 
belons^ed, were restino^ themselves under the shade 
of some large trees which overshadowed the road, 
and by which they were protected from a scorching 
mid-day sun. Most of them were young females ; 
and they had all been recently purchased in the 
eastern part of the state, where their friends still 
resided. My attention was particularly drawn to 
one of the company, a young man five and twenty 
or thirty years of age, whose arms were confined 
by chains. He was a tall, well-formed, and ath- 
letic negro, whose countenance indicated consider- 



105 

able intelligence. I asked him what he had done, 
which rendered it necessary that he should be 
chained. He replied promptly, but respectfully, 
that he had done nothing. "Why then are you 
chained ? " "I do n't know," he replied, — " may 
be they thought I would run away." " But why 
should they suspect that you would wish to run 
away ?" " I do n't know, — may be it was because 
they thought I should want to get back to my wife 
and children." " Have you then a wife and chil- 
dren ?" "Yes, I have a wife and four children in 
H. county, and may be they thought I would not 
like to leave them ! " His story was probably a true 
one, and yet, with the full knowledge of this fact, 
he had been sold into distant bondage, and was now 
leaving his wife and children forever. Well might 
the owner of such a slave suspect, that he would 
long to escape and return once more to those who 
were dearer to him than the whole world beside. 

The amount of suffering which is occasioned by 
such sales is very great, for scenes of the same 
nature with those which I have described are occur- 
ring somewhere almost every day. When travel- 
ling in Maryland a few years since, the following 
case of distressing separation was mentioned to me 
by a young gentleman who had been an eye-wit- 
ness of the occurrence. While a vessel at Balti- 
more was receiving its caro;o of slaves for New 



106 

Orleans, and just as she was about to set sail, a 
young woman who had been purchased a short time 
before by the trader who was freighting the vessel, 
was brought by her former master to the wharf. 
She carried in her arms a young child which had not 
been sold with the mother. When they reached 
the wharf, she sat down, unconscious of every- 
thing but of the presence of her infant, upon whose 
face she continued to gaze, in apparent agony, 
V/hile affording it nourishment for the last time 
from her breast. At length the signal for their 
departure was given ; her former master bore away 
the unconscious infant, and the mother, while 
uttering the most agonizing cries, was conveyed on 
board the vessel. 

The by-standers were deeply affected with pity 
for her, and with indignation at the parties concerned 
in the transaction, but there was no remedy. It 
was a fair business transaction arising from the 
nature of slavery, and it is by no means improbable 
that her master was greatly afflicted by the neces- 
sity which compelled him to occasion so cruel a 
separation. The purchaser it is likely was a cruel 
man, but he probably justified himself in pursuing 
his employment, by reflecting that if he did not 
trade in slaves, others would do it, and take the 
profit. 



107 

In addition to the sufferings occasioned by actual 
separations, there is, as I have before intimated, 
a constant dread felt by the whole slave population, 
that they shall be torn from their families and 
friends. 

It is sometimes said that liberty is not greatly 
prized by the slaves, or even by the free blacks 
themselves. I have seen the attempt made to 
convince the slave that liberty would not place 
him in more eligible circumstances. He would 
sometimes yield to the arguments, but there was 
always something in his manner which showed, 
that, even if the reason was confounded, the heart 
did not yield its assent. Although the condition of 
the free blacks in the Southern States is proverbially 
wretched, and most of them are sufficiently ap- 
prized of its inconveniences and miseries by their 
own bitter experience, yet none of tliem manifest 
an inclination to return to slavery. Fully acquaint- 
ed with both conditions, they submit to the incon- 
veniences of freedom, not indeed contentedly, but 
with no design of improving their circumstances by 
sacrificing their liberty. While residing at the 
south, I knew an intelligent free mulatto whose 
name was Sam. I do not remember in what man- 
ner he obtained his freedom, but he richly deserved 
it by his uniformly good behavior. A friend of 
mine who took a deep interest in his welfare, often 



108 

conversed kindly with him concerning his pros- 
pects, and endeavored to suggest plans for his 
benefit. He was struck with the unfortunate cir- 
cumstances in which the free blacks were placed, 
and once endeavored to convince Sam that his 
condition had not been improved by obtaining his 
liberty. Sam listened to his representations in 
respectftd silence, conscious of his own inability to 
maintain the cause of freedom by an array of argu- 
ment. When my friend had concluded his appeal, 
Sam's only answer was, "After all, it's a heap 
BETTER TO BE FREE." Brief, howcvcr, as the an- 
swer was, it spoke the feelings of the whole human 
race whether bond or free. If liberty could ever 
be accounted worthless, it would be such a liberty 
as falls to the lot of the free negro, when surrounded 
by slaves and their masters. Yet, with no bet- 
ter prospects than these, he was able to decide, 
with a clearness of apprehension that nothing could 
confuse or mislead, that freedom was still invalu- 
able. While this principle remains in full opera- 
tion in the heart, it is in vain that the slave is 
convinced that his external circumctances would 
not be improved by obtaining his freedom : though 
satisfied that by remaining a slave he shall be better 
fed, and clothed, and sheltered, and nursed when 
sick or old, he still feels that the power to choose 
for himself and to direct his own actions is more 



109 

than an equivalent for all these advantages, and 
his heart replies, '^ After all, it '5 a heap better to 
le freer 

It is true that we hear of slaves to whom free- 
dom is offered, and who, under all tlie circum- 
stances refuse to accept the boon ; and such cases 
have probably sometimes occurred. If tliese, how- 
ever, were investigated, they would be found to 
present some peculiarity which causes them to be 
apparent exceptions to a universal principle. Even 
the gift of liberty may come too late. When life 
has been drained to the very dregs, or when free- 
dom would render its possessor a houseless wan- 
derer, disqualified by a life of dependence to make 
provision for his ow n wants, and especially when 
kindred and friends must all be deserted to obtain 
that boon, which will be worthless if they too 
cannot participate in its enjoyments, — in such 
cases it is not wonderful that even freedom should 
be refused. " Let me return to my dungeon," 
said the tenant of the Bastile, the doors of whose 
cell had been thrown open, after having been 
closed upon him for forty years. " Let me return 
to my dungeon. My eyes can no longer endure 
the clear hght of day ; and of all who once loved 
me, not one survives." And yet who ever thought 
that the cells of the Bastile were in themselves 



no 

preferable to the fair field of nature, or confinement 
within their walls to personal liberty. 

I should not think it necessary to make even a 
passing remark upon this subject, had I not heard 
the owners of slaves so often allude to their content- 
ment and satisfaction with their condition, as a 
reason why slavery might with propriety be con- 
tinued. But though sometimes driven to such ar- 
guments in self-defence, I must do them the justice 
to say that, in general, they are far too clear-sighted, 
and too well-informed, not to see their fallacy. 
When a distinguished northern politician was 
reported, a few years since, to have spoken lightly 
of the evils of slavery, in comparison with the con- 
dition of the free laborers of other countries, the 
suggestion was received by slave-holders with 
scorn, and was attributed to an unworthy desire of 
obtaining popularity in the south. I am happy to 
believe that his remarks were misunderstood, or 
were uttered without due reflection. It is certain 
that they produced no conviction of their truth 
amons: those who best know what slavery is. 



LETTER XVII. 



Washington, July 21, 1835. 

From a gentleman well known in this country 
for his literary and scientific attainments, and who 
now resides in this district, I have been furnished 
with many interesting facts respecting the domestic 
slave trade, and the miseries often occasioned by 
it. Scarcely a week passes, in which pressing 
applications are not made to him by negroes, who 
are about to be separated from their families, and 
sent to the south, begging him to purchase them, 
in order to prevent their removal. Some of these 
cases are of a very trying kind. There is one at 
this moment pending, which is fitted to excite the 
keenest indignation, not only against the master, 
but against the system which gives occasion to 
such flagrant injustice. 

A negro, about twenty-five years old, who is 
married, and has three or four children, has just 
applied to my informant, stating that he is to be 
sold immediately to a slave-dealer, and separated 
forever from his family, unless he can find some 



112 

resident in the District who will consent to pur- 
chase him. He is a member of a church in this 
city, and has uniformly sustained a christian char- 
acter. His master wishes to raise a few hundred 
dollars, which he has not the means of doing con- 
veniently, without the sale of one of his slaves. 
Now it happens that the purpose for which this 
money is to be raised is well known, and is no 
other than to purchase a mulatto woman, with 
whom he is known to be criminally connected. As 
if even this were not a sufficient provocation to the 
moral sense of the comnumity, there is an aggra- 
vation arising from the motive which determined 
the master to sell the slave of whom I am speaking, 
rather than any other. He had endeavored to 
employ this slave in bringing other colored women 
into the same relation to him, as the mulatto 
woman whom I have mentioned, but here the 
servant felt that he had a Master in heaven, whom 
he was bound to obey, rather than his earthly 
master. His refusal had greatly irritated his master, 
and led to his being selected for sale. 

A poor woman is now residing in this city, who, 
together with her two children, was, some years 
since, separated from her husband, and brought to 
this place, in order to be shipped for Georgia. In 
her distraction at being separated from her hus- 
band, she leaped from an upper window, and fall- 



113 

ing upon the pavement, her limbs were broken in 
a shocking manner. She is a helpless cripple, 
but in her affliction she has applied to the great 
Physician, who heals the maladies of the soul, and 
is now waiting in the confident hope, that she shall 
meet again her dear children " where the wicked 
cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest." 

Cruelty to slaves, though odious in all, seems 
especially so in females, from whom we expect 
examples of kindness and gentleness. Notwith- 
standing, however, its revolting character, instances 
of great cruelty on the part of mistresses as well 
as masters are occasionally witnessed. 

A woman, who is still residing in this city, had 
a slave for whom she had no regular employment, 
and whom she allowed to find work for himself, 
requiring him to bring her weekly a certain sum of 
money as his wages. He was diligent and faithful 
in endeavoring to find employment, but sometimes 
could obtain but little, and consequendy could 
not always earn the amount which his mistress 
required. Irritated by repeated failures, and insti- 
gated by a revengeful spirit, she resolved at length 
to sell him to a slave-dealer, so that he should be 
compelled to leave the District, where his rela- 
tions reside. She accordingly sold him to a trader 
in Alexandria. Of his separation from his connec- 
tions for the last time, as they all supposed, I had 



114 



an account from one who was an eye-witness. 
Such scenes must be substantially the same, wher- 
ever they occur, and though most deeply affecting, 
need not be described. Fortunately for the poor 
slave,, his case became known to Dr. S., a member 
of the same church, and one whose christian 
beneficence knows no other limit than his means. 
He could not bear' to see a worthy christian brother 
torn in this manner from his relatives, his birth- 
place, and the privileges of the christian church, 
and being joined in his enterprise by another mem- 
ber of the same church, they resolved, though 
with considerable personal inconvenience, to step 
between him and perpetual banishment. They 
accordingly followed him to Alexandria, and at 
length induced the trader to sell him, though at a 
large advance beyond what he had himself given. 
I shall leave you to imagine the joy of the poor 
man, when, instead of receiving his order to em- 
bark for New Orleans, the doors of the slave 
prison were opened, and he was permitted to return 
with his christian brethren to Washington. He is 
now employed in slowly earning the price of his 
liberation, and when this is accomplished he will 
find himself not only free, but in the midst of his 
kindred and friends. 

This evening I have been deeply interested in 
conversing upon the subject of American slavery 



115 

with the gentleman mentioned at the beginning of 
this letter. He thinks there can be no greater 
absurdity, than to suppose that the whole colored 
race in the United States are to be removed to 
Africa ; and this he maintains, notwithstanding his 
strong attachment to the Colonization Society, in 
whose cause he has labored long and faithfully. 
He does not believe, on the other hand, that the 
two races will ultimately occupy the same territory, 
but that the blacks will possess some portion of the 
southern country to the exclusion of the whites. 
He states his conviction, also, that the slaves will 
all be free at no distant period, and that it is the 
part of wisdom to consider the event as neither 
doubtful nor remote, and to make all necessary 
preparations for it. Tlje kind of preparation which 
he recommends is precisely that wliich the Ameri- 
can Union desire, — the general diffusion among 
the slaves of moral and religious influence, that 
they may become not only a free, but an intelli- 
gent and virtuous portion of the community, 
whether separate, or still mingled with the white 
population. 

The friends of the colonization cause are the 
only persons, whom I find in this quarter evincing 
a deep interest in the improvement of the African 
race, and such I know to be the case in states still 
farther south. Some regard their improvement 



116 



only as subsidiary to colonization, but others con- 
sider it as a thing most desirable in itself, and with- 
out regard to their final settlement. 

There is, at this time, a strong feeling of indig- 
nation, in this city, against the measures of the 
northern abolitionists, which renders any attempt 
to improve the condition of the colored people far 
more diflicult tlian it was but a short time since. 
The excitement is greatest among the advocates of 
perpetual slavery, and least of all among the 
friends of colonization ; but all the friends of the 
African race deplore the interference which has 
occasioned it. 



LETTER XVIII. 



Washington, July 22, 1835. 



This morning I was introduced to a clergynrian 
who has an extensive acquaintance in the northern 
part of Virginia. He represents the present enni- 
gration from that state to the south-western states 
as very great. The land-holders in some parts of 
Virginia are becoming poorer nearly in direct pro- 
portion to the number of their slaves and the ex- 
tent of their plantations, while those of Mississippi 
and Louisiana are growing rich with unexampled 
rapidity. In consequence of this, the planters in 
Virginia are selling their plantations as fast as pos- 
sible, and removing with their slaves. When sales 
cannot be made, on account of the scarcity of pur- 
chasers, the younger members of the family often 
remove, taking with them a share of the slaves, 
and commence new plantations in the south, while 
the other members of the family remain in Vir- 
ginia. 

When neither the planter nor his family remove, 
the slaves are sometimes let upon hire to others 



118 

who are removing, and who are not furnished with 
the requisite number of laborers to enable them to 
cultivate a large plantation. Many of those who let 
their slaves upon hire, are such as are either par- 
ticularly attached to them, or are, from principle, 
indisposed to sell them, while they are still unable 
to furnish them with profitable employment upon 
their own plantations. Wages are now so high, in 
Mississippi and Louisiana, as to amount, in a few 
years, to the market value of the slaves ; and some 
masters, who have felt unable or unwilling to 
emancipate them without compensation, are taking 
this mode to acquire the price of their freedom. 
The labor upon the cotton plantations is in general 
not very severe, and the climate of the cotton 
region in the south-western states, though common- 
ly prejudicial to the health of the whites, is favor- 
able to that of the slaves. In many cases, when 
the younger members of a slave family have been 
sent to a southern plantation, they have been so 
much gratified by their change of situation, as to 
send the most favorable account of their circum- 
stances to their relatives in Virginia, urging them 
to embrace the first opportunity to join. them and 
share in their abundance. Cases of this kind are 
of so frequent occurrence, that it is said, the slaves 
in general do not now, as formerly, consider it a 
({reat evil to remove to the south, unless the 



119 



removal occasions a separation of family connec- 
tions. The increasing poverty of the planters in 
Virginia, and their consequent inability to furnish 
a comfortable support for their slaves, increase the 
desire on the part of both master and slave lo 
remove to a land of greater abundance. 

A gentleman, in one of the poorer counties of 
Virginia, has nearly two hundred slaves, whom he 
employed, for several years, upon a second rate 
plantation of eight or ten thousand acres, and who 
constantly brought him into debt. At length he 
found it necessary to purchase a smaller plantation, 
of good land, in another county, which he con- 
tinues to cultivate for no other purpose but to sup- 
port his slaves. 

The clergyman, from whom I derived most of 
this information, represents the free blacks, in the 
District of Columbia, as in a very deplorable situa- 
tion ; ignorant, poor and vicious, and often exposed 
to great sufferings by their poverty, especially 
during the winter. Their sufferings he thinks, are, 
in most cases, directly occasioned by their sloth. 
There are some schools for colored children in 
AVashington, in addition to the Sabbath schools: 
but upon the whole very little is done for their 
improvement as a class. The slaves of the Dis- 
trict, employed, as they generally are, as domestics, 



120 



are thought to be in a much better condition than 
the free blacks. Tliere are many colored mem- 
bers of the Methodist churches in this city, but 
such is their ignorance, and so numerous are their 
temptations, that they occasion much anxiety and 
trouble to the churches with which they are con- 
nected. 

At the house of Dr. S., this evening, I saw and 
conversed vAih an intelligent colored woman, who 
related many cases of the cruel separation of fami- 
lies by the domestic slave-trade. Among others, 
she mentioned a grandson of her own, whose case 
I found was by no means peculiar. He was a 
slave about twenty-two years old, and was induced, 
by offers of assistance from a white man, to run 
away from his master, for the purpose of escaping 
to a free state. The man who had promised his 
assistance proved his betrayer, and carried him to 
New Orleans, where he sold him as a slave. For 
a long time his relatives supposed that he was 
dead, but they had at last heard the particulars of 
his fate, from one who saw him at New Orleans. 
The natural love of liberty, on the part of the 
slave, is said to be often imposed upon in this 
manner. 



121 



July 23. 



This morning I called at the office of Judge 
Cranch, in company with Mr. F., to whom I am 
indebted for many attentions. My object was to 
ascertain such facts, respecting the colored people, 
as miofht be found in his office, since it is in the 
court over which he presides, that the criminal cases 
occurring in the District are tried. Slaves, how- 
ever, are never tried in this court, but by magis- 
trates. It appeared that of one hundred persons 
confined for crime, either before or after trial, in 
the jail in this city, thirty-four were persons of 
color. Of the number of trials, however, as they 
appeared in a single docket consulted for the pur- 
pose, only thirty-one out of one hundred and 
seventy-six were cases in which colored persons 
were defendants. 

A very interesting fact was stated casually by 
Judge Cranch, respecting the colored people con- 
nected with Methodist churches in this city. He 
remarked that their reputation is in general good, 
and that they are seldom or riever broifght before 
the criminal courts for misconduct. This testimony 
appeared to me of the highest interest and impor- 
tance. It was but yesterday, as I have previously 
stated in this letter, that an excellent clergyman 
was lamenting the ignorance, and the low state of 
9 



122 



piety among these very persons, and yet, low as is 
their standard of Christian principle, and imperfect 
as their knowledge of duty is known to be, it is 
sufficient, according to the testimony of this upright 
and enlightened Judge, to preserve them, almost 
perfectly, from the commission of those overt acts 
of crime, to which their situation so powerfully 
tempts them, and of which their irreligious brethren 
are so frequently guilty. If such is the effect of 
religious principle, we need not look to legislators 
to devise plans for elevating the character of the 
colored race, hou.h their aid, if well directed, may 
be of great value. We are to rely upon the church 
of Christ for effecting, through the influence of the 
gospel, that great change which will fit this de- 
pressed and now ignorant race to become useful 
and happy members of the communities to which 
they shall belong. 

A number of slave-dealers reside in this District 
witliin view of the Capitol, and their advertisements 
constantly appear in the various newspapers of the 
city. In fact, the '' ten miles square" are the 
very seat and centre of the domestic slave-trade. 
This is an outrage upon public sentiment, which 
Quo-ht not to exist at the seat of our national govern- 
ment. The privilege of opening a slave-market, 
with as much publicity as was ever enjoyed by a 
slave-factory upon the coast of Africa, is wholly 



123 



distinct from the right to own slaves ; and even if 
the latter were continued, the former ought not to 
be tolerated. Why should it be piracy to purchase 
a cargo of slaves in Conoco and offer them for sale 
in Charleston, while it is lawful to procure them in 
Alexandria or Washington and transport them to 
the same market ? Is it because the negroes in 
the former case are reduced to slavery for the pur- 
pose of supplying the trade, and in the latter they 
are only continued in slavery ? If the fact were so, 
the reason for the distinction would still be unsatis- 
factory. Are a man's rights less important because 
he has been long deprived of them — perchance 
even from the days of helpless infancy ? But the 
fact is often otherwise. The African tribes acquire 
slaves as well for their own use, as for market, 
and hence the slave brought from the African 
shore, like his companion in tribulation purchased at 
Washington, only changes his place of servitude ; 
with this difference, however, that the former is 
brought to a more enlightened country, the latter 
often plunges into deeper moral darkness. 

Is it because the trade in one case is carried on 
between independent states, and in the other 
between states which are confederate ? Why 
should this make a difference in the crime ? In 
either case the slave is torn from home and kindred 
and friends, and carried to a distant land, where he 



124 

is compelled to spend his life in toiling for those 
to whom he has given no right to* control his 
actions. But even this ground of distinction fails 
in those states which claim to be sovereign and 
independent. 

The subject of slavery in the District of Columbia 
is one which is completely within the power of 
Congress, acting as the legislature of the District ; 
and should they even adopt a plan of general 
emancipation, provided the rights of their constitu- 
ents in the District were regarded, the south 
would have no more reason to complain, than of a 
similar act on the part of the legislature of Virginia 
or Maryland. 

To the state governments belongs exclusively the 
control of this subject within the several states; and 
no one not included within their limits, can pro- 
perly complain of them for exercising their right. 
To Congress, in like manner, it belongs to deter- 
mine whether slavery shall continue in the District 
of Columbia, and no state or states has a right to 
interfere with them, should they think proper, in 
compliance with the wishes of the people of the 
District, to adopt a rational system of emancipa- 
tion. The expediency, or even the justice of such 
interference, without the request of a majority of 
the people of the District, may be questioned. 



125 



This District presents the curious anomaly, in a 
republican government, of a people governed by 
laws enacted by a legislature not elected by them 
selves, and over whom they have no more control 
than had our ancestors over the British parliament. 
It will scarcely be believed, that, in consenting to 
place themselves under such a government, they 
anticipated the enactment of laws contrary to their 
wishes, and deeply afF(;cting the very constitution 
of the society in which they live. At the same 
time, it is believed that the interest felt by a large 
majority of the inhabitants of the District, in the 
continuance of slavery, is very inconsiderable, and, 
but for the recent excitements, it is not improbable 
that they would have been willing, even now, to 
petition Congress for the final extinction of the 
system within their limits. 



LETTER XIX. 



^ Washington, July 23, 1835. 

I HAVE visited to-day, in company with my 
friend Mr. F., the penitentiary devoted to the 
criminals of the District. Tlie buildings stand in a 
very pleasant situation, near the Potomac, a mile 
or two below the city. Every facility was here 
afforded to my inquiries by the warden, Mr. Clark, 
who conducted us through the prison, and pointed 
out everything important connected with the estab- 
lishment. The arrangements of the prison appeared 
to be of the most perfect kind, and its internal 
management pre-eminently excellent. 

The prison is provided with a physician and a 
chaplain. Six of the convicts, it is believed, have 
become pious since their admission. There is but 
one female convict, who is a colored girl, and has 
been once discharged, but was subsequently recom- 
initted, to her great joy, as she says, " because 
it keeps her from bad company ! " 

From the records of the prison, it appears, that 
since its establishment, the whole number of con- 



128 

victs, received from the District, has been 109, of 
whom 53 were colored persons. Of the latter 
number, 44 were committed for theft, 7 for man- 
slaughter, 1 for forgery, and 1 for horse-stealing ; 
or 45 for stealing, and 8 for other crimes. Theft, 
where the value of the goods exceeds five dollars, 
is a ground of commitment, and the shortest period 
of confinement is one year. A large proportion 
of those who are brought before the criminal courts 
of the District are addicted to intemperance. The 
number of free white persons in the District, in 
1830, was 27,563, and of free colored persons 
6,152; so that the latter were about two ninths of 
the former, while the number of the convictions for 
crimes which are punishable by confinement in the 
penitentiary, is about equal in the two classes. 
Such facts show that the condition of the free 
people of color is, at present, a very unfortunate 
one, and evince the necessity of efficient measures 
for promoting the influence of moral principle among 
them, and for removing from their situation every- 
thing, which tends to degrade them and to vitiate 
their character. 

This evening I have seen old Anna, the unfor- 
tunate slave mentioned under date of the 21st in- 
stant, as having thrown herself from an upper win- 
dow, many years since, while distracted at being 
violently separated from her husband. She was 



129 

born near Bladensburgh. Her " old master," as 
she calls him, in whose family she was born, and 
of whom she speaks with great respect, became 
involved in debt, and the sheriff was about to seize 
his property. Finding he could no longer retain 
his slaves, he consented to sell Anna to her hus- 
band's master, for she was now married to a slave 
upon a neighboring plantation, and was the mother 
of two little girls. In her new situation, Anna was 
treated unkindly, and was compelled to work very 
hard, both in the house and in the field. Her 
new master soon died, but her circumstances were 
not improved at his death; and when she had been 
in this family about a year, their afiairs also became 
much involved in consequence of the improvidence 
of her young master, who was very extravagant in 
his expenses, and dissipated in his habits, or, as 
old Anna expresses it in her dialect, he was ^^ very 
rapid.''^ \i now became necessary that this family, 
in its turn, should dispose of a part of their few 
slaves to pay their pressing debts, and it was deter- 
mined that Anna, who had been last purchased, 
should be sold with her children. Anna is so 
ignorant, and so many years of sorrow have now 
passed over her, since the occurrences, that she 
cannot tell the ages of her little girls. She only 
says, " the youngest was about so high, and the 
oldest about so much higher y^^ raising her crippled 



130 

arms, as if to show us their height by putting her 
feeble hands once more upon their heads. From 
her description, their ages might have been three 
and six years. 

When Anna heard that she was to be sold to a 
man from Georgia, she "went," as she says, 
" upon her knees to her young master, and begged 
him' that she and her children might not be sepa- 
rated from her husband and their father." Vice 
seems not yet fully to have hardened his heart, for 
it is plain from Anna's simple narrative, that he 
was moved by her appeal, and " swore," as she 
says, " a great oath, that they should not be sepa 
rated." He did not, however, find it convenient to 
adhere to his promise, and soon after, her husband 
was one day sent away to work at a remote part of 
the plantation, and " the man from Georgia," as 
she calls her purchaser, came in the meantime to 
her master's house. And now she was ordered to 
lake her children, and go immediately with her 
new owner. She says "she was dreadfully fright- 
ened, and did not know what to do," when they 
took her by force and compelled her to go. She 
does not remember anything distinctly which fol- 
lowed, and has only a recollection of a dreadful 
state of terror and affright, in which she seems 
to have been deprived of the use of her reason, 
and to have become frantic with grief and appre- 



131 



heiision. During this state she was brought to 
Washington, and was placed, with a great number 
of others, in the upper room of a three-story house 
in F. street. During the night, she tlirew herself 
from the window, and fell upon the pavement. 
Her arms were broken and dislocated, and her 
lower limbs and back dreadRdly injured. Her 
master, perceiving that she could never be of any 
use to him, left her lying in the garret to which she 
had been carried, and taking her little girls and his 
other slaves, departed with them to Georgia. 

It was then winter, and poor Anna's sufferings 
were extreme, not only from broken limbs and 
bruises, but from cold. She was alone, without 
fire, with no one to help her, and was totally un- 
able to help herself. Sometimes she suffered 
greatly from thirst occasioned by fever, and often 
from cold, when the blanket which covered her 
would slip from her, and she could not replace it, 
so that when the physician came to see her in the 
morning — for a physician sometimes visited her — he 
would find her, as she says, " more dead than 
alive." 

Her bones were either not set in a proper man- 
ner, or did not remain so, and one of the bones of 
her left arm has protruded two or three inches be- 
low the wrist, and is only kept from pushing its way 
through, by means of the integuments. The wrist 



132 

of the other hand also is nearly useless. When 
she was able to leave her bed, the man at whose 
house she had been left, claimed her as his slave, 
alleging that her Georgia master had given her to 
liim, and she was therefore compelled to remain at 
Washington, where her husband also came to live, 
some time after her recovery. 

Since Anna has lived at Washington, she has 
had four children, two only of whom are now 
living — a son and a daughter. Her husband con- 
tinues a slave, but is allowed one dollar and fifty 
cents a week from his wages, for the support of 
himself and family. She says she has never learned 
to " read book," but, since her afflictions, she 
hopes that she has become a child of God. For 
some time, she could not bear to think of seeing 
the family, who by selling her had occasioned all 
her affliction ; but when she thought so, she says 
she was unhappy, and at length "she had a heart 
to pray that she might forgive them, and that God 
would forgive them, and then she was happy." 
At length she saw her old mistress, who reproached 
her very much for having been unwilling to go to 
Georgia ! 

After some years, the man at whose house she 
bad been left, claimed her children also, and took 
them away, but Anna applied to the Attorney for 



133 

the District, who obtained "free papers" for her 
and her cliildren. 

She has never heard from her little girls, who 
were carried to Georgia, and does not expect to 
know anything about them in this world. She 
says ''she has done mourning about them, but 
always prays for them, and expects to meet 
them up thereJ^ She now blesses God for all her 
afflictions, because they have been, as she hopes, 
the means of her conversion ; and she seems espe- 
cially grateful that her life was so remarkably pre- 
served, at a time when she had not learned to be 
submissive to the will of God. She prizes greatly 
her religious privileges, and particularly her class 
meetings, which are the more valuable to her from 
her inability to read. 



LETTER XX. 



Alexandria, July 24, 1835. 

After spending four clays at Washington, I 
took passage in the steamboat this morning for this 
place. 

My principal ob'ect in coming to this city was, 
to visit the establishment of Franklin and Armfield, 
who have for some years been actively engaged in 
purchasing slaves for the southern market. From 
the gentlemen to whom I brought letters from friends 
in Washington, I have received every attention, 
and such directions as enabled me to accomplish 
the purpose of my visit. 

The establishment to which I have alluded is 
situated in a retired quarter in the southern part of 
the city. It is easily distinguished as you approach 
it, by the high, white-washed wall surrounding the 
yards, and giving to it the appearance of a peni- 
tentiary. The dwelling-house is of brick, three 
stories high, and opening directly upon the street. 
Over the front door is the name of the firm, 
Franklin h Armfield. It was mid-day when 



136 

I arrived. The day was excessively warm, and the 
door and windows were thrown wide open to admit 
the air. On inquiring at the door for Mr. Armfield, 
he came forward in a few minutes from the yard in 
the rear of the building, and invited me into bis 
parlor. 

Mr. Armfield is a man of fine personal appear- 
ance, and of engan;ing and graceful manners. He 
is still in the prime of life, though he has been for 
many years engaged in the traffic in human flesh, 
by which he is supposed to have acquired great 
wealth. I explained to him frankly my object in 
visiting him, accompanying my statement with a 
request that I might be allowed to see his estab- 
lishment. It was an important object in my 
journey to gain access to such an establishment, to 
see the slaves collected for transportation, and to 
ascertain the details of the trafiic. I was not 
wholly without fears, that, after all my labor, I 
should meet with a refusal ; but these apprehen- 
sions were soon dispelled, for he immediately, and 
apparently with great readiness, complied with my 
request. 

Calling an assistant or clerk, he directed him to 
accompany me to every part of the establishment. 
We passed out at the back door of the dwelling- 
house, and entered a spacious yard nearly sur- 
rounded with neatly white-washed two story build- 



137 

ings, devoted to the use of the slaves. Turning to 
the left, we came to a strong grated door of iron, 
opening into a spacious yard, surrounded by a high, 
white-washed wall. One side of this yard was 
roofed, but the principal part was open to the air. 
Along the covered side extended a table, at which 
the slaves had recently taken their dinner, which, 
judging from what remained, had been wholesome 
and abundant. In this yard, only the men and boys 
were confined. The gate was secured by strong 
padlocks and bolts ; but before entering we had a 
full view of the yard, and everything in it, through 
the grated door. The slaves, fifty or sixty in num- 
ber, were standing or moving about in groups, some 
amusing themselves with rude sports, and others 
engaged in conversation, which was often inter- 
rupted by loud laughter, in all the varied tones 
peculiar to the negroes. 

While opening the gate, my conductor directed 
the slaves to form themselves into a line, and they 
accordingly arranged themselves, in single file, upon 
three sides of the yard. They were in general 
young men, apparently from eighteen to thirty 
years old, but among them were a few boys whose 
age did not exceed ten or fifteen years. They 
were all — except one or two, who had just been 
admitted, and whose purchase was not yet com- 
pleted — neatly and comfortably dressed, and, in 
10 



138 



general, they looked cheerful and contented. As 
my conductor, however, was expatiating on their 
happy condition, when compared with that in 
which they had lived before they came to this 
place — a discourse apparently intended for the joint 
benefit of the slaves and their northern visiter — I 
observed a young <man, of an interesting and intel- 
ligent countenance, who looked earnestly at me, 
and as often as the keeper turned away his face, 
he shook his head, and seemed desirous of having 
me understand, that he did not feel any such hap- 
piness as was described, and that he dissented from 
the representation made of his condition. I would 
have given much to hear his tale, but in my situa- 
tion that was impossible. Still, in imagination, I see 
his countenance, anxiously and fearfully turning 
from the keeper to me, with an expression which 
seemed to say, like the ghost in Hamlet, " I could 
a tale unfold." 

After a short time, spent in walking around this 
yard, and examining the appearance of the slaves, 
we '' passed out by the iron gate," and crossing 
over to the right, we came to a similar one, which 
admitted us into a yard like that which we had just 
left. Here w^e found the female slaves, amounting 
to thirty or forty. These, too, were well dressed, 
and everything about them had a neat and comfort- 
able appearance, for a prison. The inmates of 



139 

this apartment were of about the same ages as 
those who occupied the yard which I had just left. 
There was but one mother with an infant ; and my 
guide informed me, that they did not like to pur- 
chase w^omen with young children, as they were 
less saleable than others, in the market to which 
they sent their slaves. In answer to my inquiries 
respecting the separation of families, he assured me 
that they were at great pains to prevent such sepa- 
ration in all cases, in which it was practicable, and 
to obtain, if possible, whole families. jMarried 
slaves, he said, were generally preferred by pur- 
chasers to those who were single, because their 
owners felt more sure that they would be contented, 
and stay at home. In one instance, he remarked, 
they had purchased, from one estate, more than 
fifty, in order to prevent the separation of ilmiily 
connections ; and in selling them, they had l)een 
equally scrupulous to have them continue together. 
In this case, however, they had sacrificed not less 
than one or two thousand dollars, which they might 
have obtained by separating them, as they would 
have sold much better in smaller lots. The 
women, in general, looked contented and happy, 
but I observed a few who seemed to have been 
weeping. 

Near the yard in which the women were con- 
fined, was the kitchen, where the food of ihe slaves 



140 

was prepared. Here everything appeared neat 
and clean, and the arrangements for cooking resem- 
bled those which we usually see in penitentiaries. 
From the kitchen we went to the tailor's shop, 
where were stored great quantities of new clothing, 
ready for the negroes when they set off upon their 
long journey to the south. Tliese clothes appeared 
to be well made, and of good materials; and in 
the female wardrobe considerable taste was dis- 
played. Each negro, at his departure, is furnished 
with two entire suits from the shop. These he 
does not wear upon the road, but puts them on 
when he arrives at the market. In the rear of 
the yard, is a long building, two stones high, in 
which the slaves pass the night. Their blankets 
were then lying in the sun at the doors and windows, 
which were grated like those of ordinary prisons. 
In a corner of the yard, a building was pointed out 
to me as the hospital ; but such was the health of 
the slaves at this time, that the building was unoc- 
cupied. 

Passing out at a back gate, we entered another 
spacious yard, in which four or five tents were 
spread, and the large wagons, which were to 
accompany the next expedition, were stationed. 

Having examined everything, so far as the ex- 
cessive heat would permit, we returned to the par- 
lor. Everywhere, as I passed along, I observed 



141 



the most studied attention paid to cleanliness, con- 
tinually reminding me of the penitentiary, which I 
visited yesterday at Washington. The fences and 
walls of the houses, both internally and externally, 
were neatly white-washed, and there was also the 
same apparatus of high walls, and bolts, and bars, 
to secure the prisoners. In most respects, how- 
ever, the situation of the convicts at the penitentiary 
was far less deplorable than that of these slaves, 
confined for the crime of being descended from 
ancestors who were forcibly reduced to bondage. 
Most of the former are confined for a kw years 
only, and then go forth as free as the judge by 
whose sentence they had been imprisoned. While 
in confinement, at morning and at evening, and 
upon each returning Sabbath, they assemble like a 
well ordered christian household, receive religious 
instruction, and unite in the sono^s of thankso-ivino" 
and praise which ascend to the common Parent of 
all. Far different is the condition of the slave. 
He is a prisoner for life ; and in his long and hope- 
less bondage he may seldom hear the voice of the 
religious teacher. 

In the parlor, I again met Mr. Armfield, who, 
during my absence, had been negotiating for the 
purchase of a slave, and had just concluded a bar- 
gain. Here I was again treated with great polite- 



142 



ness, and refreshments of various kinds were offered 
me. 

The number of slaves, now in the establishment, 
is about one hundred. They are commonly sent 
by water from this city to New Orleans. Brigs of 
the first class, built expressly for this trade, are 
employed to transport them. The average num- 
ber, sent at each shipment, does not much exceed 
one hundred and fifty, and they ship a cargo once 
in two months. Besides these, they send a consid- 
erable number over land, and those which I saw 
were to set off in this way in a few days. A train 
of wagons, with the provisions, tents, and other 
necessaries, accompanies the expedition, and at 
night they all encamp. Their place of destination 
is Natchez, where Mr. Franklin resides, for the 
purpose of disposing of them on their arrival. 
Those which are sent by water, after landing at 
New Orleans, are sent up the rivers by steamboats 
to the general depot at Natchez, where they are 
exposed for sale. 

As it is an object of the first importance, that 
the slaves should arrive at their place of destination 
'' in good order and well-conditioned," every indul- 
gence is shown to them, which is consistent with 
their security, and their good appearance in the 
market. It is true that they are often chained at 
night, while at the depot at Alexandria, lest they 



143 



should overpower their masters, as not more than 
three or four white men frequeotly have charge of 
a hundred and fifty slaves. Upon their march, also, 
they are usually chained together in pairs, to pre- 
vent their escape ; and sometimes, when greater 
precaution is judged necessary, they are all attached 
to a long chain passing between them. Their 
guards and conductors are, of course, well armed. 
After resting myself a few minutes, I took leave 
of Mr. Armfield and of his establishment, and 
returned to my lodgings in the city, ruminating, as 
I went, upon the countless evils, which '' man's 
inhumanity to man," has occasioned in this world 
of sin and misery. 



LETTER XXI. 



Steam-hoai, on the PotomaCj^^ 
July 25, 1835. 

This morning, at an early hour, I left Alexandria, 
and took my passage on board the steam-boat which 
plies between Washington and Potomac Creek. 
Among my fellow-passengers is a young man of 
the name of N. He is a slave-trader, and is now 
on his way from Washington to South Carolina with 
about fifty negroes, whom he has recently pur- 
chased. 

He informs me that he has been employed in 
this way about two years, but that his uncle, with 
whom he is connected in business, has followed 
the same employment for fourteen years. He 
takes all his slaves by land from Fredericksburg 
through Cartersville in Virginia, and Salisbury in 
North Carolina. Formerly, the firm sent a portion 
of them by water, and last winter they despatched 
two vessels freighted with slaves, one of which 
reached Charleston safely, but the other, having 
seventy-five negroes on board, was driven off by 



146 

storms to Bermuda, where the negroes all escaped 
to land, and consequently obtained their liberty. 
Their owners had taken the precaution to get an 
insurance of $30,000 upon them, and this sum 
they expect to recover, but the rest N. supposes 
that they shall lose. A by-stander suggested to 
him that he would find it for his interest to apply 
to the government of the island. He replied that 
this would do no good ; that Armfield had lost a 
whole shipment in the same way, and could get no 
redr<3ss. " But why don't you go there and claim 
them?" *' Because," said N., — mingling with 
his reply more profanity than I care to record, — 
"a nigger is just as free there, and stands 
JUST as good a chance in their courts as 
A white man ! " How sad a perversion of justice 
such a country must exhibit ! 

This man, N., is the perfect counterpart in his 
appearance to Mr. Arnifield, being vulgar in his 
manners, and mean in his personal appearance. It 
is painful to think that such a man sliould have it 
in his power to control so great a number of his 
fellow-beings, and especially women and chil(h-en. 
The greater part of the skives now on board are 
young mothers, from eighteen to twenty-five years 
old, with their children, many of them infants. 
The rest consist of boys and young men ; but 
the latter do not appear to be the husbands of the 



147 

females who are on board. From my con- 
versation with N., I find reason to conclude that 
in almost every case, family ties have been broken 
in the purchase of these slaves. Husbands are 
here whose wives remain in the District, and wives 
are now looking back upon the dome of the Ca- 
pitol, which is still in sight, and near which their 
husbands reside, whom they are never more to 
meet. 

In selling his slaves, N. assures me that he never 
separates families, but that in purchasing them he is 
often compelled to do so, for that " his business 
is to purchase, and lie must take such as are in the 
market ! " " Do you often buy the wife without 
the husband ? " " Yes, very often ; and frequently, 
too, they sell me the mother while they keep her 
children. 1 have often Jcnoivn them, take away 
the infant from its 7nother''s breast and Icee/p it, 
while they sold her. Childj'en, from one year to 
eighteen months old, are now worth about one 
hundred dollars. That little fellow there," point- 
ing to a boy about seven or eiglit years old, " I gave 
four hundred dollars for. That fellow," pointing to 
one about eighteen, " I gave seven hundred and 
fifty for last night, after dark. I sold seven fellows 
the other day, to Armfield. He just made me an 
advance of fifty dollars a head." ''' How many 
does your house purchase in a year ? " " I go six 



148 

times a year to South Carolina, and never take less 
than forty. Annfield does not usually buy more 
than about ten or twelve hundred annually ; he 
sends over land but once a year, — in midsummer. 
There's an immense deal doing now in the busi- 
ness, the price is so high ; — the owners can get 
almost anything they ask. I offered the other day 
twelve hundred dollars for two girls, and their 
owner got thirteen hundred, a day or two after. 
A first-rate field-hand is well worth nine hundred, 
and would bring it, if the owners did but know it. 
A good mechanic is worth twelve hundred. Mine 
are nearly all field-hands; but I shall not take a 
cent under one thousand for the men, when I get 
to Carolina. Did you notice the brig that was 
hauling in as we came out from Alexandria, this 
morning ? She was one of Armfield's, — she sails 
in September. He has a first rate brig building in 
Baltimore expressly for this trade. The brig Uncas, 
Capt. B., is also employed by Armfield, and is 
now at Baltimore." These facts I learned also at 
Mr. Armfield's, yesterday. "When husbands and 
wives are separated, do they seem to care much 
about it ? " " Sometimes they do n't mind it a 
great while, but at other times they take on 
right smart, for a long time." '' Do you find 
many slaves in the market ? " " Yes, I never 
found them plentier ; but the price is monstrous 



149 



high, and that, in fact, is the very reason so many- 
are willing to sell." " You have a great pro- 
portion of children." " Yes, — they sell well in 
Carolina — but they wont go in Mississippi ; — Arm- 
field never takes them if he can help it." " How 
will your field-hands be employed ? " " In making 
cotton." " But your women can't do much with 
such small children." " O yes, they '11 do a smart 
chance of work, and raise the children besides." 

N., who takes me for a southerner, as most stran- 
gers do, is quite communicative. Finding that I 
have recently been in Baltimore, where I was ac- 
quainted witli some of the traders, and that 1 was 
yesterday at Mr. Armfield's, he seems to sup- 
pose me a planter deeply interested in the price of 
slaves. He does not swear quite as much as he 
did when I first came on board — probably because 
he is alone in it ; but he enters with great spirit into 
conversation respecting the trade. He says that if 
the firm to which he belongs have lost the forty 
thousand dollars, which the negroes were worth who 
escaped at Bermuda, they had made it before they 
lost it. On their journeys over land, he informs 
me that they travel on an average, twenty-five 
miles a day. At first they become a little tired, 
but afterwards they get on very well. The small 
children are drawn in the wagons. I told him 
that Mr. Armfield was at great pains to dress 



150 



Ills negroes well when tbey get to market". N. 
says that he does the same, and that they will sell 
much better for being well dressed. 

The negroes on board the boat appear, in 
general, indifferent to their situation ; whether they 
fully understand it I do not know. To threaten to 
sell a slave to a southern dealer, was formerly the 
most effectual mode of enforcing obedience ; but it 
would seem that there are now limits to this mode 
of terrifying. I was assured, in Alexandria, that it 
was not uncommon for servants in that town, when 
about to be sold, to request that they might be sold 
to Mr. Armfield ; and his clerk told me tliat they 
had numerous applications from servants, requesting 
that they would purchase them.* Mr. Armfield 
has acquired the confidence of all the neighboring 
country, by his resolute efforts to prevent kidnap- 
ping, and by his honorable mode of dealing. 

Nothing, however, can reconcile the moral sense 
of the southern public to the character of a trader 
in slaves. However honorable may be his deal- 
ings, his employment is accounted infamous. He 
can hold no rank in society, nor can he, by any 
means, push his family into flivorable notice with 
persons of respectability. Tlie sale of slaves, also, 
is said to be generally accounted disreputable, unless 
the character of the slave, or the pecuniary circum- 



151 

stances of the cvner induce him to do it, but apolo- 
gies for this are rarely wanting. 

I observed the slaves on board the boat while 
eating their breakfast, and was glad to see that 
their food was such as they might well relish. 
Not that there is any merit in feeding slaves well, 
while on their way to market, or in dressing them 
well after their arrival ; but because it is pleasant to 
see them — however dark may be their future pros- 
pects — enjoying an interval of happiness, or at least 
of exemption from corporeal suffering. It is un- 
doubtedly true, that the jockey is at equal pains to 
present his horses sleek and well trimmed in market, 
and the principal motive of each of these traders is 
to increase his profits. There was, however, some- 
thing indescribably affecting, in looking at the little 
children while taking their meal, all unconscious of 
the wrongs which they are suffering, and of the 
still greater ones to which they will be exposed. 
As they sat in a circle upon the forward deck, and 
ate their corn-bread and bacon, and looked around 
with childish wonder upon the strange sights and 
faces with which they were surrounded, it was 
diffjcult to act the part of an indifferent spectator, 
and not to execrate openly the man who, to in- 
crease his own wealth, is hurrying these unconscious 
little beings into a distant and hopeless slavery. 



152 

And yet, of what crime has this man been guilty ? 
If slavery is a good thing, if it is " an ordinance of 
heaven," this man is a necessary hnk in the chain. 
If slaves are property, and are to continue such, 
they must, like other property, change owners ; and 
the slave-trader is but the merchant by whose inter- 
vention the article changes hands, and no more de- 
serves our censure than the drover, who takes the 
hogs and horses of Tennessee to a market in the 
Atlantic states. I am convinced, by all my inqui- 
ries, that the traders exhibit more proofs of hu- 
manity in their dealings, than a large portion of 
those from whom they purchase. Their trade is 
by common consent accursed, but it is the legitimate 
result of a system, which, in the nineteenth century, 
and in a christian land, has defenders, who main- 
tain its expediency and its justice, independently of 
its necessity. 

N. was asked whether there was no danger of 
his slaves escaping from him during their long 
march through the interior of the country. He 
replied that the principal danger occurs before they 
have left the District, while they are near their 
friends, and in a country with which they are well 
acquainted. While at Alexandria, a winter or two 
since, a man with his wife and infant child escaped 
from him, and he has never been able to recover 



153 



them. He has since learned, that the night when 
they escaped was so cold, as to cause the death of 
the child, but that the parents ultimately reached 
Philadelphia. He had been about to follow them, 
but his correspondent, who had originally informed 
him where they were, has since told him that they 
have removed, and he cannot find where they have 
gone. 



11 



LETTER XXII. 



Fredericksburg, July 25, 1835. 

There is now in the southern states a degree 
of excitement on the subject of slavery, which 
those at a distance can scarcely appreciate in a 
proper manner. This is partly the effect of long- 
cherished prejudices against the north, partly tlie 
result of the present state of political parties in the 
country, and, in no small degree, the consequence 
of the recent measures of northern abolitionists. 
For the two former sources of excitement, 1 know 
not that the north is answerable ; for the latter, a 
portion of our citizens must no doubt be held in 
some degree accountable. 

A dislike to northern institutions, to northern 
politics, and to nortliern men, has long been ex- 
tensively indulged among the natives of the south. 
I have been an inhabitant of both sections of the 
country, and am ardently attaclied to both ; but I 
must still bear the most unequivocal testimony to 
the existence of tlie prejudice to vvliich I have re- 
ferred. On the other hand, I must unhesitatingly 



156 

declare, that I have never, until perhaps very re- 
cently, seen any evidence of unkindness of feeling 
on the part of the citizens of the north towards 
those of the south. The policy which they have 
pursued, upon subjects connected with our na- 
tional government, may- sometimes have operated 
injuriously upon southern interests ; but the feel- 
ings of the north were never, that I could per- 
ceive, hostile to their fellow-citizens of the south. 
I am aware that with those politicians who are 
accustomed to attribute every calamity to the 
tariff, and the tariff to a settled purpose entertained 
by northern men, to enrich themselves by the 
spoils of the south, the assertion which I have 
now made will scarcely obtain credit; but to those 
who are well acquainted with northern sentiments 
and feelings, I have no fear that the assertion will 
appear incredible. 

Since I entered the slave-holding country, I 
have seen but one man who did not deprecate, 
wholly and absolutely, the direct interference of 
northern abolitionists with the institutions of the 
south. " I was an abolitionist," has been the lan- 
guage of numbers of those with whom I have 
conversed, " I was an abolitionist, and was labor- 
ing industriously to bring about a prospective sys- 
tem of emancipation. I even saw, as I believed, 
the certain and complete success of the friends of 



157 

the colored race, at no distant period, when these 
northern abohtlonists interfered, and by their ex- 
travagant and impracticable schemes, frustrated all 
cm- hopes. We have no expectation that, in our 
day, the prospects of the slaves will ever again be 
as favorable, as they were at the moment when this 
ill-omened interference commenced. Our people 
have become exasperated, the friends of the slaves 
alarmed, and nothing remains, but that we should 
all unite in repelling the officious intermeddling of 
persons who do not understand the subject with 
which they are interfering. We will not be driven 
by northern clamors, or northern associations, to 
do that which we would gladly accomplish, in a 
prudent manner, if left to ourselves." 

These views and feehngs may be unintelligible 
to men who know nothing of southern society ; but 
they are sentiments in which almost every man, 
woman and child, south of Pennsylvania, fully 
unites. Equally united are they, in the opinion 
that the servitude of the slaves is far more rigorous 
now", than it would have been, had there been no 
interference with them. In proportion to the dan- 
ger of revolt and insurrection, have been the se- 
verity of the enactments for controlling them, and 
tlie diligence with which the laws have been exe- 
cuted. . 



158 

But let me not be, as I think the people of the 
south generally are, unjust towards the abolition- 
ists. Their efforts ought not, in general, to be 
confounded with those of mere incendiaries, such 
as are reported to have written and circulated in 
the south, a few years since, a paragraph intended 
to stir up the slaves to revolt. With such publi- 
cations the writings of abolitionists are often con- 
founded ; and thus, while injustice is done to their 
authors, there is danger of producing, by misrepre- 
sentation, the very effects which the slave-holder 
deprecates. Such is the infirmity of human na- 
ture, tliat it is not safe to contemplate crime, as 
something with w hich w^e might " possibly have 
some connection. Men who have been filled with 
horror, because they had dreamed, in the slum- 
bers of the night, that they had committed mur- 
der, have afterwards deliberately engaged in its 
perpetration. Is there no danger that, while al- 
most every southern paper is filled with accounts 
of "publications of an incendiary character," of 
" ferocious attempts to stir up the slaves to mu- 
tiny and massacre," with representations that ''the 
north are fist uniting to break the bonds of the 
slave, and to coerce the south into measures of 
emancipation," is there no danger, even if northern 
sentiments and feelings should receive no disas- 



159 

trous bias, that the slave will be kept in a state of 
feverish excitement, and Vv ill be more prone to en- 
gage in dangerous plots, than he would have been, 
if not incited by such representations ? Upon the 
north, these representations may produce but little 
immediate effect ; since the newspapers of the 
south have there but a limited circulation ; but upon 
the colored people of the south, it seems to me that 
their bad effect is certain. A sufHeient number of 
these can read to enable them to obtain all tlie 
information from the newspapers which they per- 
ceive to be interesting to them, and through ten 
thousand channels of oral communication, sucli 
information is extended until it reaches the most 
ignorant slave, upon the most remote and secluded 
plantation. He may indeed misunderstand its im- 
port, but it at least keeps alive his thirst for lib- 
erty, and binds him more strongly to his fellows. 

Such are the evils which, in the present case, 
arise from misrepresenting tlie real object of the 
abolitionists. Scarcely have they been driven, 
even by these misrepresentations, to utter senti- 
ments in any case resembling those with which 
they are charged ; and had their statements and 
arguments been calmly answered, they would pro- 
bably have excited but little interest. Such an 
example of coolness, however, has not been set 



160 



by many of the leaders of abolition themselves, 
and they have therefore less of which they can 
complain. They have sometimes declaimed, when 
they should have reasoned ; and when they have 
reasoned, they have often assumed premises in a 
great degree at variance with truth. 



LETTER XXIII. 



Fredericksburg, July 25, 1835. 

A LADY of this city, who is ardently devoted to 
improving the condition of the colored race, related 
to me an anecdote which she had received from a 
physician residing at Washington. The doctor 
was called to visit a slave, who had been sick for 
some time, and whose master was very stern in the 
treatment of his slaves. He found him lying upon 
a heap of straw, and destitute of every external 
comfort. He spoke kindly to him, inquiring how 
he felt, but the negro made no reply, and did not 
appear to notice him. He repeated the question, 
but still received no reply. '' Speak sharply to 
him," said his master, impatiently, ''he is a surly 
dog." He again addressed him, when the negro, 
who was conscious that he was dying, stretching 
himself and composing his limbs, raised his eyes 
towards heaven and said, " thank God, I am free 
at last," — and immediately expired. The doctor 
added — and I could not but love him for it — that 
without speaking to the master, he turned upon 
his heel, and left him to his reflections. 



162 

Mv friends here unite in opinion that the free 
blacks in Fredericksbursj are more moral and re- 
spectable than many among the lowest class of 
whites. Some of the best mechanics of the city 
are colored men, and among them are several 
master-workmen, who employ considerable num- 
bers of colored laborers. 

Their opportunities for receiving religious in- 
struction ai-e but k\v. There is said to be no Sab- 
bath school for their benefit, and they can seldom 
be present at public w(»rship. Their instruction 
here has fallen, in a great measure, into the hands 
of the Baptists, as in Baltimore it is conilucted by 
the JMetliodists. No regular bills of mortality are 
kept, either here or in the District of Columbia, 
and no precise estimate appears to have been 
formed of the comparative mortality of different 
classes ; hut it is the received opinion that it is 
greatest among the free blacks, 

July 26, 1835. 

This morning I attended public worship in the 
Episcopal church. At the close of the exercises, a 
contribution was taken up for the benefit of the Col- 
onization Society. The preacher introduced the 
subject with great caution, remarking that there was 
probably no charitable object which better merited 



163 

the attention of his hearers, than that for the accom- 
plishment of which this society was formed ; — that 
much zeal was felt, in many quarters, in relation to 
its object ; — that the colonies were In a very pros- 
perous state ; — that they had flourishing churches 
in, he believed, all the settlements ; — that they 
were paying great attention to the education of 
their children ; — and, what was perhaps of still 
more Importance, they were educating the children 
of the natives, and were presenting a barrier to 
an Infamous traffic which had so long desolated the 
coasts of that unha|)j)y country. Of the bearing of 
the society upon our own country, or upon any 
portion of its inhabitants, nothing w^as said. I had 
no means of knowinsi; how laro-e a contribution was 
taken up, but should judge from appearances that 
it must have been but a moderate one. I did not 
observe any colored persons present. 

A portion of the constraint, with which the sub- 
ject of slavery was formerl)' approached, has cer- 
tainly been laid aside ; but It Is still discussed with 
reserve and caution. Ttiis, however necessary, is 
painful to those who are accustomed to converse 
without constraint upon all topics of public interest, 
and whose tlioughts and words are alike free. 

In one point, I fiequently find myself compelled 
to differ from my southern friends, — the right of 
the people of the north to discuss the tendency of 



164 

slavery, its evils, as respects every portion of the 
nation^ and the remedies to be applied to prevent 
or correct those evils. Not a few declare that the 
northern people have no such right ; that it is a 
violation of the compact between the states ; and 
that, if persevered in, it will first exclude the north- 
ern literature entirely from the southern market, 
and ultimately produce a dissolution of the Union. 
This effect, it should be observed, is attributed to 
the ordinary and peaceable discussion of the topic. 
Some, however, are not disposed to push the prohi- 
bition quite so far; but even these will not allow to 
the North American Review and Quarterly Obser- 
ver, for example, the same liberty in discussing the 
subject as to the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews. 
There is a dealer in slaves who has established 
himself in this town, where he is driving a very 
profitable business. He has his prison, with the usual 
appurtenances, which I went to view this evening, 
in company with a friend. We contented ourselves 
with an external view, and with looking through 
the fence which encloses the yard, without entering 
the place. The appearance of the establishment 
was not so neat as that of Mr. Armfield ; but the 
slaves were well dressed and clean. They were 
in groups in the yard, conversing together with all 
the seeming indifference of persons in possession of 
tlieir liberty. As we turned a corner of the yard, I 



165 

observed two or three negro women, from without, 
conversing through the fence with some who were 
confined in the yard, but apparently cheerful and 
happy. This trader is said to have about one 
hundred and fi^y on hand at this time, whom he is 
soon to send off, over land, I believe, to New 
Orleans. He is not thought to treat his slaves so 
humanely as Mr. Armfield. A recent instance was 
mentioned of his sending off a number of mothers 
without their little children, whom he had pur- 
chased with them. He had separated them, 
because the children w^re of no value in the mar- 
ket to which the mothers were sent. It is difficult, 
however, in such reports, to separate truth from 
falsehood. 

The windows of the buildings appropriated to 
the use of the slaves, were grated with iron, in the 
same manner as Mr. Armfield's, and in the same 
manner, also, as those of the penitentiary at Wash- 
ington. The predecessor of this man is said to 
have been infamous for his cruelties, and very 
appalling stories are still told respecting him, but 
such as I had no certain means of verifying. It is 
obvious that, in general, the pecuniary interest of 
the trader will deter him from practising those 
cruelties upon the slave which would impair his 
value in the slave market. This, however, would 
not be sufficient to prevent the most revolting 



166 



instances of occasional cruelty arising from the 
influence of passion. Interest is the sanne motive 
which influences the jockey to be kind to his horse ; 
but it is well known, that, notwithstanding this 
motive, he is often extremely cruel. A gentle- 
man, who has conversed much with slave-traders, 
tells me, that though mulattoes are not so much 
valued for field-hands, they are purchased for do- 
mestics, and the females to be sold for prostitutes. 
The latter fact I am sorry to state, but a regard to 
the high authority from which I received it forbids 
that it should be concealed. One of the worst 
effects of slavery is its depraving influence upon 
the moral character of female slaves, which is 
represented as most deplorable, and that, not in 
a few instances, but almost without exception. 
Whatever pains are taken with them while young, 
the influence of corrupt society is such as to lead 
them almost universally astray, and no objection 
seems to be felt to keeping in one's house female 
slaves, who have been guilty of crimes for wliich a 
white female would forfeit her life. 



LETTER XXIV. 



Fredericksburg, July 2G, 1835. 

The change to which I have before alluded, in 
the sentiments of the slaves, in regard to removing 
to tlie south, is observable in this vicinity, and in 
general they are not particularly averse to such 
removal, except when it occasions a sej)aration 
from their connections. Great numbers of slave- 
holders have recently removed, and are now 
removing from Virginia and North Carolina to the 
south-western states. These carry their slaves 
with them, and, settling in a fertile country, their 
own situation, and that of their slaves, is greatly 
improved. The negroes who remain at the north 
soon become acquainted with the improved condi- 
tion of the emigrants, and are desirous of following 
them. Even when sold to a slave-trader for that 
purpose, they manifest less concern than for- 
merly. A number of negroes in a neighboring 
county lately ran away from their master, and 
came to the trader in this city, requesting him to 
purchase them from their owner, and send them to 
New Orleans. 



168 

A gentleman In this city has a female slave 
whom he purchased from a trader, for the purpose 
of preventing her separation from her husband. 
Her former mistress had taken some offence at her, 
and had sold her to the trader, with the intention of 
having her carried out of the state. The husband 
and wife were both greatly distressed, and from 
compassion to them this gentleman purchased her. 
After this trouble was over, a year or two passed 
quietly away, when suddenly the husband, who 
had belonged to the minor heirs of an estate, was 
seized, just as a drove of negroes were setting off 
for the south, and immediately hand-cuffed to 
prevent his escape. He had been sold some little 
time previously, but had not been informed of his 
fate, until the hour of departure arrived. The 
gentleman who had purchased the wife, learning 
the circumstances, attempted again to prevent the 
separation of the husband and wife, by offering to 
sell the latter to the trader, provided he would 
guarantee that they should not be separated, when 
sold at the south. Tiie trader was willing to pur- 
chase her, but said he could give no such guaranty, 
as he always sold his slaves to those who would pay 
the highest price, and he supposed it possible, that 
for this purpose he should have to separate them. 
Under these circumstances, the husband, who was 
much attached to his wife, begged her not to leave 



169 



her present situalion, and thus they were finally- 
separated. 

A friend, to whom and to whose family I am 
indebted for many attentions, considers the final 
extinction of slavery as decisively indicated by the 
treatment which slaves now receive in the south, 
and particularly in Virginia, when compared with 
that which was connnon twenty or thirty years 
since. Even the advertisements for runaway slaves 
would serve to indicate a change in public senti- 
ment, and in fact, as the satne gentleman observes, 
are collectively a good index of the state of feeling, 
not only at the same place at different periods, but 
in different places at the same time. A Virginia 
advertisement usually contains a clause, stating, or 
implying, that the slave has run away, notwithstand- 
ing he has always been treated with the greatest 
indulgence ; while advertisements from the ex- 
treme south are solely occupied, like those for 
stray oxen and horses, in describing tlieir natural 
and artificial marks, their ages and liabits. 

He thinks, also, that in this state, slaves would 
have no value whatever as field-hands, were it 
not for the southern market. The labor performed 
by them is not sufficient to meet the current 
expenses of the plantations, at least of the more 
ordinary ones, and the only profit of the planter is 
derived from the negroes whom he raises for market. 
13 



170 

It remains still to be determined whether, if wages 
were paid to the slaves in place of their present 
regular supplies, and in proportion to the amount 
of services rendered, a different result would not be 
obtained. That this experiment will soon be 
made, I have great confidence, and am inclined to 
believe that, if judiciously made, it will succeed. 
Tliis practice, begun with the slaves early in life, 
and accompanied with mental and moral cultiva- 
tion, may prove the first step towards a complete 
and most happy change in the agriculture of this 
state, and in tiie condition of the laborers. Fear, 
in some of its forms, is now the moving principle 
of the laborer ; then he will be influenced by hope ; 
and this single change will prove, I doubt not, suf- 
ficient to resuscitate the now palsied energies of 
one of the finest portions of our country. So fine is 
the climate and so mild are the winters here, that 
agricultural labors may be continued through a far 
greater portion of the year than at the north. 
Let Virginia be cultivated by laborers who shall 
be influenced by the hope of increasing their own 
enjoyments, and New England may yet find, that 
her own barren and frozen hills are no longer 
capable of coming in competition with the soil and 
climate of the more favored south. 



LETTER XXV. 



■ Richmond, July 28, 1835. 

In my journey yesterday from Fredericksburg 
to this place, I travelled with a planter, who had 
emigrated from North Carolina to Louisiana, where 
he has resided for several years, but is now about 
to remove from his plantation to a more healthy one 
in a different part of the same state. His present 
journey was undertaken partly for the purpose of 
increasing tlie number of his slaves ; and he had 
just completed the purchase of one hundred and 
fifty-five, the entire stock of a plantation near Fred- 
ericksburg. For these he had given seventy-five 
thousand dollars, or about five hundred dollars, on 
an average, for each. They included mechanics of 
every kind necessary upon a great plantation. 
The purchaser was still young, and exhibited, in a 
striking degree, that promptitude and decision of 
character, so often observable in those accustomed 
early to direct their own conduct and that of others. 
Visions, perhaps I ought rather to say sober calcu- 
lations, of boundless wealth, to be acquired by the 



172 

labor of his slaves, were alluring him forvvardj and 
though naturally humane in his feelings, his kind- 
ness to the slaves will probably go no farther than 
to provide for their animal wants, regardless of 
their hic^h destinies as moral and intelli({ent bein2:s. 
He was not wholly without apprehension that 
his hopes of soon acquiring a vast fortune might be 
frustrated by a fall in the price of liis staple produc- 
tion, cotton. He remarked that he should soon 
pay for his slaves, if the present price of cotton 
continued; and that he should ultimately succeed, 
if it did not fall below twelve and a half, or even 
ten cents, but that he could not aflbrd to go below 
that price. 

He represents the cares of the master upon an 
extensive plantation as very great. Tliese are much 
increased in case of sickness among the slaves, as 
they cannot in general be depended upon to nurse 
one another, and the whole care of them while 
sick often devolves upon the master. He says 
^' their weekly rations in Louisiana consist of eight or 
ten quarts of corn meal and four pounds of northern 
pork ; for the latter of which, in the winter, bacon is 
commonly given to them, and molasses also is fre- 
quently substituted for the whole or a part of the 
pork, at the rate of a pint of the former for a pound 
of the latter. Some make use of salt fish instead of 
pork ; but this is generally thought objectionable, on 



173 

account of its tendency to create violent thirst. The 
neo-roes commonly choose to receive their corn- 
meal, rather than its equivalent in bread, that they 
may cook it for tliemselves. Rations of spirits are 
never given to them, except upon peculiar and rare 
occasions, as at corn shucldug, and the like. It Is 
therefore extremely rare that a negro is seen intox- 
icated, and still more so that he acquires a habit 
of intemperance." 

To the inquiry, how do tlie slaves in Louisiana 
usually spend the Sabbath? he replied : ''gene- 
rally in complete idleness; lolhng in the shade, or 
basking in the sun. Some of them are disposed to 
go to preaching, when there is an opportunity ; 
but the greater part consider it a hardship to be 
compelled to attend meeting. They are universally 
attached to the Baptist, rather than to any other 
church, and seem to consider ' going into the 
water,' as a most essential part of religion. " This," 
he observes, " may perhaps be attributed in part to 
its involving an act of self-denial, as they are dog- 
gedly averse to bathing or washing, for the purposes 
of cleanliness. This indisposition to practise ablu- 
tions for the promotion of health and cleanliness, is 
nearly universal, and they can scarcely be more 
offended by anything, than by a compulsory sys- 
tem of bathing or of washing their clothes. If not 
compelled to do it, they would never wash a gar- 



174 

ment from the time when it is put on new, until 
it is worn out. Even house servants must be 
watched hke children, or most of them would 
neglect attention to cleanliness. 

" Whatever induk^ences, in regard to dress or 
other tilings, custom has established, as the right of 
the slave, he is very particular to require ; and if any- 
thing is withheld, he remembers it as his due, and 
asks for it, when he has an opportunity. 

'' The slave-traders have exacted such a profit 
upon their slaves, that the planters, wdien intending 
to make a considerable purchase, either come to 
the north for the purpose, or employ a factor to 
whom they allow a stipulated commission on the 
purchase money. By such means only, can they 
prevent the combinations among the traders, to 
keep up the prices, as the infamy of the traffic 
operates to prevent great competition." 

A gentleman from Halifax N. C, represents 
the slaves as rapidly diminishing in that part of 
the state, by their removal to Alabama, and other 
southern states. In most cases, the masters emi- 
grate with their slaves. 

This morning I called upon Mr. P., a gentleman 
of distinction, to whom I had letters, and who was 
known to have recently published an article on the 
subject of northern abolitionism, full of alarm to 
southern slave-holders. He complains of us for 



175 

concerning ourselves at all with the subject, because 
no interference of the north can possibly, as he 
thinks, promote the true interests of the slave. 
Such, he says, has been the effect of the northern 
anti-slavery movements, that not an individual at 
the south dares to appear as the friend of emanci- 
pation. There was a time when they seemed to 
be near to the attainment of their object, — a pros- 
pective system of emancipation. To this object 
he had, as I well know, earnestly devoted himself; 
but he declares that he can no longer safely ap- 
proach the subject. 

I remarked upon the seeming absurdity of 
omitting all efforts for the removal of an ac- 
knowledged evil, because others had taken an 
injudicious course respecting it, " Would it not 
be wiser to attempt to check, and ultimately to 
remove the evils which must spring from a con- 
tinuance of this system, rather than to do noth- 
ing but oppose the mad projects of abolition- 
ists ? " He replied that " it might be so, but the 
south would not act upon compulsion." " But is 
the gradual extinction of slavery, by some 
practicable method, the same thing as yielding 
to the wishes of the abolitionists? Is not that 
the very course which they most of all disapprove ? 
and do they not appear to consider gradualism, 
as they term it, more objectionable than even per- 
petual slavery ? Is it not evident that the pres- 



176 

ent relations of southern society must ultimately 
change? and is it wise, from resentment at iniperti- 
nent interference, to let the only* time escape, in 
which it may be possible to act efficiently and 
successfully ? " 

I stated tliat the whole public sentiment of the 
north was decidedly opposed to slavery. IMr. P. 
replied, " so also is that of the south, with but a few 
exceptions. A small party only is contending for 
the propriety of perpetual bondage ; this party 
is increasing, but is principally confined to South 
Carolina, where the dissertation of Prof. Dew has 
made some impression. 

I then remarked, that though the sentiments of 
the north were irreconcilably averse to slavery, a 
large proportion of the talent and weight of char- 
acter there was opposed to the movements of the 
abolitionists, upon the ground that the course 
recommended by them was founded in ignorance of 
the real relations of southern society, and of the 
difficulties in the way of its renovation. But was 
it wise, I asked, while they were doing what they 
could to give a prudent and safe direction to the 
public mind, to dechire to the world that nothing 
should be done, until those who improperly inter- 
fered should abandon such interference ? 

Mr. P. remarked, that the su' ject had become 
connected with politicSj but that he deprecated 



177 

any such connection, and was certainly conscious 
of being influenced by no considerations of that 
kind, in the part that he had taken. He regards 
it as an alarming feature in nortb.ern abolitionism, 
that it aims to carry the multitude with it, and to 
overpower by numbers. 

The conversation, wherever I go, is now turning 
upon the insurrection in Mississippi, and upon the 
summary measures taken to quell it. Mr. P. 
remarked that the attempt was already made, but 
in his view very improperly, to connect this with 
abolitionism. Most persons, whom I hear speak- 
ing upon the subject, express great pleasui'e that 
the usual forms of law were in this case superseded 
by Judge LyncKs law. 

Mr. P. says, he is not surprised tliat the doc- 
trines of the aboliiionists have gained ground to such 
a degree at the north. In the stand which they 
take in favor of human liberty, he declares that 
they arc right. " God never intended that one por- 
tion of maid<ind should be held in bondage by 
another. Being abstractly right in this position, it 
is not wonderful, that persons who are ignorant 
of the difficulties in the way of en^ancipation, 
should be clamorous that it should occur immedi- 
ately. The only wonder is, tl)at there should be 
intelligence enough at tlie north to present so 
powerful an opposition." 



LETTER XXVI. 

■ :- : ■- Steam-hoat, on the Chesapeake, 

July 29, 1835. 

A Virginian, of no little influence, with whom 
I conversed while in Richmond, says that " the 
Union must ultimately be dissolved, and that, for his 
own part, he cares very little how soon. It is im- 
possible for the southern states to continue united, 
against such a combination as are now opposing 
their interests. The east and the west will always 
be united in measures injurious to the south." I 
replied, "suppose the division to have been made; 
what then ? In what manner are the southern states 
to be secured against the consequences of the rapid 
increase of their colored population ? " He replied, 
*'they will have no ultimate security, — for the 
present, they could escape from the effects of the 
abolition agitation." " But what is to be the end 
of slavery? in what is it to result ? " "I don't 
know; I thank God I have very little to bind me 
here." 

The suspension of all measures for ultimate 
emancipation seems to be universally attributed, in 



180 

the slave-holding states, to the interference of the 
Anti-Slavery Society. That tlie movement, hegun 
some years since in V^irginia, was suspended solely, 
or even in any considerable degree, on that 
account, seems to me, however, wholly improbable. 
The Anti-Slavery Society has been regarded with 
no special alarm until very recently, while the 
efforts at the south to fix a period to the exist- 
ence of slavery have been, for a much longer time, 
interrupted. Tlie true solution is probably this. 
The southern movement was begun under the in- 
fluence of a recent and ap})aning calamity. As 
time passed on, and no new disaster occurred, 
those who disliked to part with their property, and 
those who were perplexed to devise any plan of 
relief, became more willing to postpone tlieir 
efforts. The increased demand for slaves in the 
south-western states, and the consequent advance 
in their price, contributed to the same effect. 
When slaves become unprofitable, or their designs 
are suspected, tliey can immediately be sold, and 
removed to a safe distance ; and a vast revenue is 
derived from their sale. The numerous emigra- 
tions of the whites, who carry their slaves with 
them, serve also greatly to diminish their number, 
and the consequent alarm respecting them. It is 
still true that apprehensions are occasionally enter- 
tained in Virginia of fresh insurrections ; but this fear 



181 



is not at present sufficient to stimulate to the adop- 
tion of measures for ultimate erjancipation in opposi- 
tion to the combined operations of interest, uncer- 
tainty respecting the proper measures to be taken, 
and resentment at northern interference. The lat- 
ter, as being more chivalrous, is the reason alleged 
in public debates, and in newspaper paragraphs. 

]\fy inquiries in Richmond were much limited by 
the absence of almost all the gentlemen to whom 
I had letters. While tliere, I was also very ill; and 
my indisposition, together with the uncertainty 
whether my friends, and those to whom 1 had let- 
ters In Norfolk, were now there, determined me to 
omit visiting it on my return. Investigations rela- 
ting to the condition of the colored people, cannot 
1)3 made with propriety or even with safety in the 
present excited state of southern feeling, except 
by conversation v.lih those to whom our motives 
are well known, and even then great caution is 
necessary. . ■ . ; , -■ . 

Baltimore, July 31, 1835. 

The present high price of negroes is present- 
ing a great temptation to unprincipled men to 
attempt to sell such as are free ; and tliere is need 
of constant vigilance in the northern slave-holding 
states, to prevent tlie success of such iniquitous 



1S2 

attempts. From letters read to me yesterday by 
the Rev. Mr. McKenney, I became acquainted with 
an interesting case of this kind, of which the follow- 
ing is the outline. In one of the counties bordering 
upon the Chesapeake, a gentleman, about twenty 
years since, manumitted a number of his slaves. 
The deed of manumission was required by law to 
be registered within one year from its execution ; 
but owing to some informality in the minute of the 
magistrate before whom it was acknowledged, it 
appeared to have been executed more than a year 
before it was recorded. Their owner died ; and in 
his will took no notice of them, having never 
treated them as slaves, from the time when the 
deed was executed. 

The defect in the instrument having been re- 
cently ascertained, a slave-trader who has purchased 
the right of the heir, is now attempting to reduce 
them again to slavery. A gentleman of the name 
of B., who has often distinguished himself as the 
friend of the oppressed African, hearing of the 
meditated wrong, caused a writ to be issued to 
apprehend the slave-trader, who had gone Tn pur- 
suit of them. In this he had fortunately been suc- 
cessful. The suit, however, on which he has ar- 
rested him, has no connection with the case of the 
manumitted slaves, of whom I have spoken ; but it 
affords time to warn them of a danger, of which 



183 

they have no more apprehension than any other 
free citizens of Maryland. Still the suit is far from 
being a fictitious one, or one in which the rights of 
humanity are not concerned. It is founded upon 
another transaction, of the same general nature, in 
which this dealer in slaves had borne a prominent 
part. A lady, who died some time since, had, by 
her will, directed that a certain female slave should 
be sold for ten years, and should then be free. 
She was accordingly sold for that term. Such 
sales of slaves, for a term of years, are not permit- 
ted, by the laws of Maryland, to be made to persons 
residing out of the limits of the state, or to professed 
dealers in slaves, who are accustomed to send their 
slaves to a market in another state. This slave- 
dealer, in violation of the law, purchased the female 
in question, and sold her to a regular southern 
trader, by whom it is said she has been sent to 
Norfolk, for the purpose of being shipped to New 
Orleans. What the issue of these cases may be, is 
still uncertain. The prosecutor is fearless, but 
such are the evasions to which the traders resort, 
that it is difticult to bring them to justice. 

It is sometimes thought to be a proof of moral 
courage, boldly to denounce all who are concerned 
in the slave-holding system, although the assailant 
of slavery may never have left New England on 
his adventurous enterprise. But 'physical courage 



184 

is often to be exhibited by the southern friends of the 
colored race, to a degree of which the northern phi- 
lanthropist is perhaps not fully aware. So desperate 
is the game which the illicit trader is playing, that 
he is prepared to carry it through, by almost any 
act of violence and blood, in case he is interrupted 
in his designs ; and if frustrated, the most summary 
vengeance is sure to he taken, if it is in his power. 
Several anecdotes are told of the personal intrepidity 
of Mr. B., the gentleman who has so nobly volun- 
teered in the cases above specified. On one occa- 
sion, having been informed that a number of free ne- 
groes had been seized, and were then detained at a 
rendezvous of kidnappers, about twelve miles off, 
and that they were upon the point of being removed 
from the state, he immediately set off for their 
rescue, with such assistance as he could obtain. 
His movement, how^ever, had been observed by a 
confederate of the gang, who set off at the same lime 
to warn them of their danger. Tliis fact, too, w^as 
known to Mr. B. ; and each exerting himself to the 
utmost, they arrived at the place of rendezvous al- 
most at the same moment; and the gang, notified 
of their danger, rushed out of the house to escape, 
at the same moment that an armed guard was 
stationed at every outlet to intercept their flight. 
The gang were accordingly apprehended, but not 
without a dangerous conflict ; and the free blacks in 
their possession were liberated. 



185 

On another occasion, having received notice that 
a vessel was proceeding down the bay with free 
colored persons on board, who had been kidnapped, 
and were forcibly detained, he hastened to the 
shore, and after hailing the vessel to no purpose, as 
the traders did not choose to stop, he took a small 
boat and boarded it, demanding the liberation of 
the free negroes. When they denied that tliey 
bad any on board, he went among the slaves, telhng 
them that if any of them had a right to freedom, 
they need not fear to say so — that he would protect 
them at all hazards. Several of them then told 
him that they were free. These he took before a 
magistrate, and caused an investigation to be had, 
which resulted in their liberation. 



13 



LETTER XXVII. 



Baltimore, July 30, 1835. 

The attention of the Methodist and Baptist 
churches has been turned, for many years, to the 
religious instruction of the colored population 
of the south, and they have labored, in this 
field, with the most encouraging success. Other 
churches have not been wholly unmindful of their 
duty in this respect, but none have equalled these, 
either in the extent of their labors, or in the num- 
ber of their converts. The preachers, by whose 
labors these results have been accomplished, have 
been, in comparison with those of some other 
churches, plain and Illiterate men ; and though 
highly acceptable to the colored people, they have 
In general been held in little respect by many of 
the more intelligent part of the white population. 
The. consequences have been, to some extent, 
unfavorable to the religious principles of the latter, 
who, unfortunately, but perhaps not unnaturally, 
came to regard piety as synonymous with igno- 
rance. 



188 



The importance of furnishing preachers of a 
higher grade, in respect to literary attainments and 
polite accomplishments, has long been felt by the 
intelligent members of those churches, and a gradual 
change has been for some years in progress. A 
clergyman to whom I have been indebted for much 
valuable information respecting the condition of the 
colored churches, states that, many years since, a 
bishop of the Methodist church remarked to him, 
that a wide door was open at the south, and espe- 
cially in South Carolina, for the religious instruc- 
tion of tlie colored people, but lliat he had great 
difficulty in finding suitable persons to occupy the 
stations. He wished to find men who could un- 
derstand the views and feelings of the slave, and 
who should still be so intelligent and well-bred as 
to be respected by the master. The time had 
been, he remarked, when masters would not per- 
mit their slaves to be taught, but now many were 
desirous that they should receive religious instruc- 
tion. In this he supposed that in general they 
did not so much regard the good of the slave, as 
their own advantage. He attributed a considerable 
change in public sentiment, within his diocese, to 
the following incident, which had become exten- 
sively known : 

A new overseer, who happened to be a religious 
man, had been employed by a gentleman to take 



charge of an extensive plantation. The first morn- 
ing after entering upon the discharge of his new 
duties, he called the slaves around him, addressed 
them affectionately, read a passage of scripture to 
them, and then, while they all knelt with him, he 
offered up fervent prayers in their behalf. He did 
the same at evening, and continued the practice 
from day to day. The slaves, convinced that he 
really cared for them, became strongly attached to 
him, and highly distinguished for good order, obe- 
dience and industry. The consequence was, that, 
in a short time, the plantation was better cultivated 
than it had ever been, and became remarkably 
profitable to the owner. Inquiries were soon made 
by neighboring proprietors into the cause of this 
change, and a conviction was produced in the minds 
of many, that religion was of great Importance to 
the successful management of slaves. 

For the following abstract of the number of 
colored persons in communion with the Methodist 
Episcopal church in the United States, I am 
indebted to the politeness of the Rev. William 
McKenney. The document Is well fitted to produce 
in the public mind a high respect for the self-deny- 
ing and truly christian labors of the pastors and 
teachers of that church. 



190 



Pittsburg Conference, 








285 


Ohio « 






502 


Missouri " 








996 


Kentucky « 








. 5,709 


Illinois « 








72 


Indiana " 








273 


South Carolina « 








22,788 


Virginia " 








. 8,083 


Baltimore « 








. 13,851 


Philadelphia « 








9,025 


New York « 








516 


New England " 








320 


Holstein « 








2,593 


Tennessee " 








4,674 


Mississippi " , 








2,622 


Alabama « 








3,163 


Georgia « 








7,421 


Maine " 








8 


N. Hampshire " 








8 


Troy « 








69 


Oneida « 








69 


Genessee " 








109 



83,] 56 



The conferences above-mentioned, although they 
include all the states and territorieSj are not limited 
by state lines. For exampje, the Philadelphia 
Conference takes in the whole of the eastern shore 
of Maryland, the states of Delaware, New Jersey, 
or a part thereof, and only a part of Pennsylvania. 
The Baltimore Conference includes all the western 



191 

shore of Maryland, a part of Pennsylvania, and all 
that part of Virginia, east of the Blue Ridge? 
which lies between the Potomac and Rappahannoc 
rivers ; and so of the rest. 

The whole number of colored communicants, 
belonging to this church, it appears, is 83,156 ; 
and if to this were added the very large number 
included in the Baptist and other churches, it would 
be evident that the religious interests of our colored 
population have been by no means wholly ne- 
glected. 

The assistant bishop of the Protestant Episcopal 
church in Virginia, has lately made the religious 
instruction of the colored people the subject of an 
interesting pastoral letter ; and the Presbyterian 
churches are devoting particular attention to the 
same subject. The labors of Rev. C. Van Ren- 
salaer have contributed more, perhaps, than any 
other occurrence, to stimulate the churches in 
Virginia and Carolina to greater efforts in this 
cause, and have shown that even northern clergy- 
men, whose characters are a guaranty for their 
prudence and good intentions, may take a part in 
this great enterprise of improving the moral condi- 
tion of that unfortunate race, without excitino; 
formidable opposition. There is, however, such a 



192 



jealousy of foreign Interference, that the work must 
be left principally to the southern churches ; and 
in proportion as piety shall increase among the 
white population, exertions for the benefit of the 
slaves may be expected also to increase. 



LETTER XXVIII, 



BaltimorEj July 30, 1835. 

To a stranger, one of the most revolting features 
in American slavery is, the domestic slave-trade ; 
and hence the inquiry is so frequently made, 
whether this evil at least may not be abolished. 
Various plans have been proposed for the purpose, 
but none which appear feasible; and it may well 
be doubted, whether this feature can ever be 
obliterated while tlie general system remains. 
All which it appears possible to do, is to regulate 
the sales in such a manner, that husbands and 
wives, parents and young children, shall never be 
separated. This, no one can deny, ought to be 
done; and if the system cannot exist with this 
innovation, it ought not to be tolerated for a single 
hour. The domestic relations* are at the founda- 
tion of all the virtue, and consequently of all the 
happiness of society, and everything inconsistent 
with the perpetuity of these relations ought at once, 
everywhere, and forever, to cease. But whether 
even this is practicable, is a question which I con- 



194 

fess my inability to answer. I cannot see how 
these separations are to be prevented, while the 
husband is the property of one master, and the 
wife and children of another, each master being 
wholly independent, and his slaves being considered 
as in the most absolute sense his property. The 
mode of accomplishing this change belongs to 
southern moralists to determine ; but it is not a sub- 
ject which they are at liberty to neglect, and least 
of all, can the christian, who acts in view of his 
Master's command not to separate those whom 
God has joined in the marriage relation, consent 
that such separations should be legalized by the 
law^s of a state of which he is an active and respon- 
sible member. 

When these relations are not violated, the char- 
acter of the domestic slave-trade, considered as a 
part of the general system of slavery, depends upon 
the circumstances under which the transfer is made. 
If the condition of the slave is improved in every- 
thing essential, and especially if, with a full under- 
standing of the nature of the transaction, he really 
desires the transfer, no additional wrong appears to 
be done by the new relation in which the parties are 
placed. This case, so far from being uncommon, 
is one which frequently occurs. 

Removal at mature age from one's parents, 
kindred, and early friends, and separation from the 



195 

scenes of childhood, though often painful events, 
are unfortunately not peculiar to the African slave. 
They are the lot of the European emigrant, who 
seeks in the new world an asylum from the op- 
pression and poverty of the old, and they are 
voluntarily encountered by a large portion of the 
enterprising youth of this country, who leave 
kindred and friends for a settlement in the western 
wilderness. These, indeed, are all animated by 
the hope that their circumstances in life may be 
improved by their removal ; but the slave too 
may be animated by the same hope, for slavery, 
like freedom, has its different degrees of joy and 
sorrow, of fear and hope, of pleasure and pain. 
The domestic slave-trade then is not, under all 
'possible circumstances of the slave, an evil. To 
be accounted the property of another, is an evil, 
but being so accounted, it will be advantageous 
to him to be transferred to a better situation, even 
while he continues in slavery. 

A literary friend who is a native of North Caro- 
lina, remarked to me to-day, that he could tolerate 
everything else about slavery better than the 
shocking separations, which he saw continually 
caused by the removal of slaves to the south and 
west. When I told him that the evil seemed 
inseparable from slavery in such a country as this, 
he reluctantly assented to the position, after a mo^ 



196 

menl's hesitation, in a manner that seenied to me 
little short of ludicrous. My meaning had been, 
that a system, to which such evils were necessary 
incidents, was intolerable ; his conclusion evidently 
was, that if it cannot be made better, it must be 
submitted to with all its inconveniences. 



Philadelphia, Aug. 1, 1835. 

Among my fellow passengers from Baltimore 
was a dealer in slaves, whose principal ^eld of 
operations is Maryland. We had also Mr. C, a 
southern planter, the owner of about a thousand 
slaves, tlie market value of which is nearly half a 
million. Tlie former belongs to a class which is 
deservedly infamous ; the latter, if no other blot is 
found upon his escutcheon than the purchase of 
these slaves for his own emolument, is an honor- 
able man. How charming a virtue is consistency 1 

It is said that the mining operations of the gold 
country are now employing great numbers of slaves. 
The hopes, therefore, which have been entertained 
by many, that the central parts of Virginia and 
North Carolina, and the western districts of South 
Carolina and Georgia, would soon be inhabited by 
none but freemen, will suffer a disappointment, 
should the present system of mining continue. It 



197 

is probable also that this will prove to be the worst 
form which slavery has ever taken in those states. 
All the southern gentlemen with whom I meet 
in this city, as well as those with whom I con- 
versed in Virginia, speak of the increased severity 
to which the negroes are subjected, and ascribe it 
to the interference cf the abolitionists. That their 
interference has been, thus far, w holly mischievous 
in its direct operation upon the condition of slaves, 
no one acquainted with the facts can doubt. , Still 
I believe that, as a reason for the increased se- 
verity with which the slave is treated, it is given 
with but little reflection, and is at best but partly 
true. It is the very nature of slavery, if continued 
after the numbir of its subjects becomes so great 
as to be formidable, to increase in the severity of 
its restrictions. This effect was heightened sud- 
denly and fearfully by the Southampton insurrec- 
tion, which exhibited, in an appalling form, the 
danger to v\hich the white inhabitants, residing 
upon the plantations, were exposed, from the 
slaves by whom they were surrounded. The first 
impulse, as it exhibited itself in the debates of the 
lemslature of Viro;inia, was to remove the dano-er 
by a system of progressive emancipation, which 
should first prepare the slave for freedom, and 
then remove forever the fetters which bound him. 
Unfortunately, this impulse gradually ceased to 



198 



operate, but the danger, which had occasioned it, 
continued nearly the same. It remained, there- 
fore, to increase the vigilance of the whites, and to 
remove from the slave, so far as it was practicable, 
every element of power. Hence has resulted a 
more fixed determination to keep him in ignorance, 
for " knowledge is power.^' This resolution has 
been confirmed by the interference of northern 
abolitionists, for this has heightened their present 
dangers ; but, had no peril arisen from without, 
the natural increase of danger, from the constantly 
enlaru;ino; number of slaves, must soon have led to 
the same measures which have now been adopted 
for obtaining temporary security. The security 
afforded by such measures, however, can be but 
temporary. Like a torrent stayed in its course, 
it is but accumulating greater force, and preparing 
to burst forth at last with increased power, and to 
spread around it a wider desolation. To keep mil- 
lions in ignorance, while knowledge, like the light 
of day, is beaming all around them, and to con- 
tinue them in unconditional slavery, among a peo- 
ple who glory in being as free as the air of heaven, 
will be alike impracticable. The hope of freedom 
is cherished fondly by every slave ; and were the 
cup of hope to be dashed from his lips — were he to 
see that slavery, without mitigation, and without end, 
was to be his portion — in that moment when hope 



199 

should be extinguished in his breast, rage and des- 
pair would arm him with a strength which would 
lay waste the fairest portions of our country, and 
cease its devastations only when the last throb 
should cease in the last, despairing heart. 

It is in vain that we assure the slave that his 
present condition is preferable to that of the free 
negro ; — he may see that it is so, but he feels that 
he has a right to freedom, in circumstances more 
favorable for its enjoyment than those in which 
the African is now placed in this country, when 
the fetters are removed from his body only, while 
his mind continues in slavery to ignorance and 
vice. By these he may be brutalized, but the 
brutes whom he will most resemble are not the 
ox and the ass, those patient and harmless drudges, 
who quietly toil for the benefit of their masters, 
but beasts of prey, who want only the power to 
destroy those by whom they are held in chains. 

A tendency to the employment of brute force, 
or a coercion little short of force, seems to be one 
of the characteristics of the day in which we live, 
as indeed it has been, in various degrees, of all 
past ages. The master would coerce his slaves, 
the abolitionist would coerce the slave-holder, and 
the latter seeks in his turn, to restrain what he 
terms the madness of fanaticism, by the employ- 
ment of physical force and intimidation. 



200 



This is, in fact, the tendency of ultraism, in all 
its various forms. The ultra advocate of temper- 
ance is unwilling to trust to the force of argument, 
though this has almost achieved for him the vic- 
tory, but is disposed to finish his triumph by the 
more summary process of legal and ecclesiastical 
coercion. But it is a method of producing har- 
mony which will succeed neither in the temper- 
ance, in the anti-slavery, in the anti-abolition, nor 
in any other cause ; and whatever gratification it 
may occasionally yield to those who resort' to its 
aid, its mischiefs will usually, in the end, return 
upon their own heads. The feeling which prompts 
to coerce a christian brother to emancipate his 
slaves, by refusing to hold christian communion 
with him, is probably more akin to that which 
seeks to check abolitionism by tar and feathers 
and the gallows, than those who indulge the feel- 
ing are willing to believe. 

The following principles have received con- 
tinually fresh confirmation at every step of my 
journey, and in all my recent intercourse with my 
friends, w^hether at the north or the south. They 
are among the fundamental principles of the 
" American Union," and, by a uniform adherence 
to them, we may hope at length to remove the 
almost innumerable obstacles which now prevent 



201 

the desired improvement in the condition of the 
African race : 

1. The intellectual and moral elevation of the 
free people of color demands the united efforts of 
all the friends of their race. 

2. The instruction of the slaves is, by the laws 
of the land, intrusted to their masters, but it is a 
duty which they cannot neglect without great 
guilt as well as danger. 

3. No measure can tend to the ultimate benefit 
of the slaves, in which the masters do not generally 
and heartily concur. 

4. The north will never attempt to interfere 
with the slavery of the south, by any other means 
than by moral influence ; and, on the other hand, 
will never consider the question of slavery in 
our common country as one in which she has no 
concern. 

5. Our only safety in the dangers which menace 
us in relation to slavery, must be souglit in the 
influence of christian principles in every portion 
of the country, and among all classes of its inhabi- 
tants. 



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